by Jasmine Walt
“All right,” I said heavily, getting to my feet. It wasn’t exactly like I had anything to hide anyway. All I wanted was to go home, and I was no danger to them. “As long as you promise not to use the information against me or others on Recca.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Nalan assured me, “but there are some Tua who might. I don’t blame you for being wary.”
“Well, get on with it.”
Arala reached out and gently placed two fingers on the nape of my neck. At the same time, she linked her free hand with her brother’s, while the lizard leaned against me. I expected the same strange sensation as before, but instead, she merely stroked her fingers down my spine in a soothing, repetitive motion. Slowly, the tension began to drain out of my body, and with it, I felt my memories pass from my mind into hers. It was a little disconcerting at first, but when I realized she wasn’t stealing them, merely copying, I relaxed. What would these strangers make of my life in a totally different setting? Could they even understand our customs and values?
“There,” the female finally said, removing her hand. “It is done.” I looked up into her sparkling gaze. “What a fascinating creature you are! A shape-shifter and a magic user all at once!”
“You’ve had quite your share of vivid experiences for someone who has lived for such a short time,” Nalan commented as he passed a palm over the lizard’s head. His scales had turned bright pink for some reason, and I wondered if they were an indication of his mood.
“It would seem,” Arala said, “that humans, mages, and shifters live life more quickly and dangerously than we do. I had no idea the barbarian dimension was so exciting.”
“Barbarian?” I said, a little indignant, as the two began to talk excitedly in their own language. I was disgruntled that they were leaving me out of the conversation, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. At least they weren’t torturing me, I thought as I bent down to pet the lizard again. He rubbed against me, loving the attention.
“We have never considered leaving the Tua realm,” Nalan said as they turned back to me at last. “We were taught that the outer dimensions do not offer anything much of interest, or worthwhile challenges to our intellect. But now that your memories have shown us how rich and varied your land is, we may very well come and visit.”
Oops. Could Recca survive more Tua visitors? On the other hand, these younger Tua seemed a lot more easygoing than Ta’sradala. I could imagine what a stir they’d cause in Solantha. Their size alone would cause a traffic jam.
“You are welcome to stay with me any time, provided that I ever get out of here,” I said, smiling despite myself. These two might be giants, with powers I couldn’t begin to understand, but their faces were lit up like two kids in a candy shop. “What’s the deal with this guy?” I asked, stroking the lizard again. “I noticed that he changes color.”
“His name is Broghan,” Alara said. “He is terribly playful, and changes shape and color at least a dozen times a day.”
At that, Broghan got to his feet. His form rippled, and I gasped as he changed into a miniature pony with silver fur and a purple mane. He whinnied as I touched his velvety nose, and then changed again, this time into a giant frog with orange and blue spots. I recoiled as his skin turned slimy beneath my hand, and he flicked me on the cheek with his sticky tongue right before changing into a baby dragon the size of a small dog.
“Amazing,” I said as I scooped him up. He opened his mouth and belched a tiny stream of fire that nearly singed my eyebrows off before he curled up into my arms. “These are all animals from my world, although nobody has seen a dragon in ages. How is he able to do this?”
The Tua chuckled. “Changing forms and size is commonplace in our world,” Alara said. “Although Broghan is special.” They exchanged another glance, and I sensed there was some inside joke I wasn’t getting.
“All right, well now that you know who I am, can you please tell me how to get out of here?” I asked, a little exasperated now. “I really want to get home.”
“Why the hurry?” Nalan asked. “You only have Ta’sradala waiting to taunt and torture you again. It is really a shame that you have gotten mixed up in her games. Is this Iannis you wish to marry truly worth enduring her wrath?”
“Yes, he is,” I said tightly. “And I’m getting really tired of everyone questioning my upcoming marriage.” By Magorah, was this what I had to look forward to for the rest of my life? Even the Tua, who had little concept of our ways, thought that Iannis and I were a bad match.
“There is no need to get so angry,” Alara said soothingly. “We will help you, but first you need to relax, because you’ll have to be at full strength if you are to have any chance. Here.” She conjured a mug out of thin air and handed it to me. “Drink this.”
I wanted to protest, but it seemed unwise to refuse, so I took the frosty mug and sipped from it. The light blue liquid was both sweet and bitter, and quite tasty, so I gulped down another mouthful. Instantly, I began to feel wobbly, the world tilting around me as the colors and shapes began to meld into each other.
“What’s happening?” I gasped, panic seizing me as I clutched at one of the trees for balance. Had they accidentally poisoned me?
Nalan said something, but his voice was garbled, and I couldn’t make anything out. The next thing I knew, one of them gathered me up, and I forced myself to relax. I would have to ride out whatever this was until it passed, and pray to Magorah that I hadn’t misjudged the intentions of these people.
12
I woke up in a giant bed big enough to sleep at least ten people my size. By the light coming in from an overhead window, I guessed it was mid-morning, though with these strange colors it was hard to be sure. Groaning, I turned onto my side—the mattress was hard like a plank of wood, and my back twinged in protest. A snuffling sound got my attention, and I sat up to see Broghan curled up at my feet. He’d taken on the form of an adorable wolf cub, and when he opened an eye to look at me, I felt my heart melting despite myself.
Noting with relief that I wasn’t cuffed or restrained in any way, I decided I wasn’t in any imminent danger. My mouth was a bit dry, but the glass of water waiting by the bed quickly took care of that. As I considered whether to leave the bed and explore or wait for some sign of my hosts, I stroked Broghan’s soft pelt. He rolled onto his back, begging me to pet his belly, then licked my hand when I complied. I was amazed by how accurately he mimicked an alien species—if I didn’t know better, I might have thought he was a real wolf cub. Even the scent was correct.
After a little while, I got up from the bed and decided to look around the room. To my delight, I found a set of leathers and boots waiting for me, folded up in an oversized closet—an exact replica of my enforcer leathers back home. The Tua must have gleaned them from the memories they’d taken from me. It was definitely a good sign that they had gone to the effort to provide these, along with the human-sized glass and jug I’d drunk from. I put on the leathers and was delighted to discover they were even more comfortable than the ones at home. I marveled at the Tua’s casual mastery when I noticed the jacket buttons were of gold covered with black lacquer and engraved with my initials.
After I finished dressing, Broghan led me down the stairs into a large room and toward what looked like the dining table, where the Tua were waiting. They had shrunk themselves and the furniture down to near-human size, another hospitable gesture, although my chair was still high enough that my feet dangled well above the smooth stone floor.
“You look much better,” Nalan said as I sat back and warily scrutinized the feast that was spread out over the huge table. Nothing looked at all familiar.
“Thanks. I feel a lot better. What was that knock-out drink all about, anyway?” I asked as I picked up a dark red roll and began to slather it with something that looked like lavender-colored butter. It smelled a bit different from normal bread, but it still had that yeasty scent, so I felt comfortable trying it out first. “Were you guys
putting some kind of spell on me?”
“Not at all!” Arala exclaimed. “That was just a relaxation tonic meant to open up your mind. We wanted to give you the knowledge you need to leave the Tua realm, but you were tense and tired. The tonic should have put you in a more receptive state of mind.”
“Unfortunately, it turns out that it was too strong for your constitution,” Nalan said. “Due to your shifter nature, it did no lasting harm, and simply put you to sleep. We will have to do this another way, but first, let us eat. As we understand, regular feeding is very important for your health.”
I reluctantly agreed, worried at this evidence that they were not all-knowing and could make dangerous mistakes. Did I understand correctly that their tonic could have killed me if I’d been human? How safe was the breakfast spread, then? I decided to eat only small quantities of any one food and use Fenris’s detection spells to ensure nothing was poisonous to me.
We spent the next hour talking over breakfast, or was it brunch? They might have entirely different mealtimes here than on my world, and it didn’t seem important enough to ask.
Nalan and Arala explained that they were the last of their line, and that the forest I had been traveling in was only a tiny part of their domain. They were old enough to live on their own, though they were not yet adults by Tua standards—having lived for a mere eight hundred years of our time. That put them close to Iannis’s age, I reflected, but they seemed to mature a lot more slowly.
I asked if the entire world was so sparsely populated as the bits I had seen, and they explained that there were a few small towns, but most of their world was wilderness. The Tua were not a particularly fertile race—they could only bear one child every five hundred years or so. Breeding with humans was far easier but frowned upon by Tua society. Even so, every once in a while, some adventurous Tua would take up with a mortal from the other realm. From their disapproving tone, it sounded like Ta’sradala had defied her own realm’s customs as much as Recca’s when she kidnapped Iannis’s grandfather.
I listened intently to their words, aware that, as far as I knew, no other human had ever gotten a Tua to sit down and talk about their society like this. Iannis and Fenris would be thrilled at this information, if I ever got out of here. “We regret that we insulted you earlier by questioning your relationship with Iannis,” Arala said as she polished off a leg of what seemed to be pheasant, if pheasant meat was deep blue. “While you were asleep, Nalan and I have been looking through and discussing your memories, and now we understand better why it is such a sensitive subject. As far as I am concerned, being part Tua, he seems a worthy partner for you.”
I wanted to say that the Tua connection was the part I could do without, but that would have been a lie. I would not change a single thing about Iannis, not even the bits he got from Ta’sradala.
“He is so busy lately that you don’t see enough of him,” Nalan added with a pitying glance. “Politics in your world seem quite complicated, and unnecessarily so. Here in the Tua realm, we do not much regard shape or size or the type of power we wield, since everything can be changed so easily. Things would be much simpler in your world if you all treated each other as the same race.”
“You should tell that to Ta’sradala,” I said, unwillingly amused by Nalan’s philosophic ruminations. “Some of us are pretty bigoted on Recca, I admit, but her sense of superiority is truly out of this world.”
“Well, of course, she is Tua,” Arala said, but stopped herself when she saw me bristle. “Oh, well, it’s not likely we could ever agree on that. You don’t know enough about us to have an accurate opinion.”
“That’s true, I guess, but I can’t respect anyone who blatantly abuses their power,” I said. “I guess there are good and bad Tua, just as there are good and bad mages or humans. But a bully is a bully.”
As we continued the discussion, I was impressed by how quickly they grasped concepts and ideas based only on what they’d seen in my mind. Broghan was curled up on a bench nearby, and his eyes flicked back and forth between us attentively, as if he were following the whole conversation. I wondered if he understood everything that was being said.
“I am especially interested in meeting your absent friend, this Polar/Fenris individual,” Alara said. “He is like you in some ways, Sunaya, and yet so very different, judging by his memories as compared to yours.”
“Oh! Right,” I said, remembering belatedly that they would have looked at Fenris’s memories too. No wonder they’d been so fascinated—he’d seen much more of the world than I had, and was a scholar of magic and magical history. “Hopefully I’ll get to see him again soon. I was so relieved when he called Iannis and confirmed that he was alive and well.”
“I’m certain he’ll return to you soon, no matter the danger,” Nalan said confidently. “He cares for you and Iannis very much—he will not abandon you entirely.”
After the meal, we continued our conversation with a walk on the grounds. Broghan accompanied us in eagle form, soaring overhead as the Tua led me through the gardens of their gigantic estate.
“I would like to learn more about this First Mage that your mages worship,” Alara said as we walked along the edge of a shimmering purple pond. Giant red water lilies floated along the surface, and I caught a glimpse of multi-finned green fish swimming beneath the surface. “Fenris knew a lot about her teachings, but he had little information about her early life and origins. Does anyone know where she came from?”
“That’s a better question for Fenris or Iannis,” I said ruefully. “I’m still very new at being a mage and only learned about Resinah a year ago.”
“Hmm,” Nalan said, a distant but thoughtful expression on his face. “It seems that Fenris has heard about some memoirs written by her first disciples. Some of them have been lost forever, and others are kept locked up as sacred relics by their descendants. He has never been able to get at these records, though they are on his…bucket list, you call it?”
I suppressed a laugh—the Tua had expressed bafflement at Northian slang terms more than once. “A bucket list is a list of things that you want to accomplish before you die,” I said. “Fenris is a scholar, so of course something like that would be on the list.”
“What if Resinah was one of us?” Alara asked suddenly, her face brightening at the possibility. “She might very well have been amongst the first Tua to cross over to the human realm, and may have taken it upon herself to bring magic to your people.”
“There seem to be reports that she was extraordinarily tall for a human,” Nalan said. “Perhaps she adjusted her size to fit in better?”
“You mean like Ta’sradala did?” I asked. “She’s tall, but nothing like you guys when I first saw you.”
Nalan nodded. “She would be taller than even us in our realm, since she is much older. But we would frighten you if we walked through Recca in our natural forms, so it is only natural that we would shrink down to a more manageable size.”
I snorted at that. Eight feet was still considered freakishly tall by anyone’s standards, especially for a woman. But, admittedly, it wasn’t unheard of, whereas a thirty-foot tall giant would definitely attract attention.
“I don’t know about that theory,” I said after I’d thought about it for a moment. “The mages believe that Resinah’s power came directly from the Creator, and by all accounts, she wasn’t the type of person to create a whole religion based on a lie.” The mages back home would be outraged at the very suggestion. Could the same race have produced a Resinah and a Ta’sradala? They were like night and day.
Nalan shrugged a broad shoulder. “I don’t see how it is a lie. Our own powers come from the Creator.”
So they believed in the Creator, too. “Is Resinah a Tua name?” I asked.
“Well, no. And your magic language, Loranian, does not resemble ours at all. But she would have used an alias while on such a mission and made up an entirely new language,” Nalan speculated. “That would be as easy as a chi
ld’s game for any of us.”
“It would be very out of character for a Tua to go live amongst humans and pose as one of them,” Alara admitted. “But we too have our share of curious and eccentric individuals, and Resinah could have been one of them. If mages are descended from our race, it would explain why they have longer lifespans than ordinary humans. And why mages from Manuc, where we Tua most often visit, live so much longer than those in other countries.”
“About that,” I said warily, looking them up and down again. “Given your huge size, it is a bit surprising that you can have children with humans at all.”
“Why?” Alara said. “We can take any form or size at will—just look at Broghan. We are able to breed with any race we run across, no matter how exotic—not that we would necessarily care to.”
“Coming back to our original subject—the legend that the First Mage did not die, but merely vanished during an ocean voyage, implies that she may very well have returned to the Tua realm,” Nalan said in a reasonable voice. “Or perhaps she has gone on to explore another world entirely.”
I scowled. He spoke as if she was still alive, when the First Mage had died over four thousand years ago. “If that’s the case, then why is it that she still responds to petitioners in her own temples?” I asked. “I’ve personally spoken to her on more than one occasion. If she’s gone off to some other world, or back to the Tua realm, then how is it that she still hears and answers us?”
The Tua fell silent for a long moment. “You make a very good point,” Alara finally said. “We shall have to investigate this further. Surely there are records that will tell us who went missing from the Tua realm within the relevant time period.”
“Yes, I believe there are,” Nalan concurred. “What a delightful little mystery you’ve given us, Sunaya! This will keep us busy for some time. And if we are right, then you are our very remote relative.” He grinned down at me.