“And you care about the Buzzards?” Ashel sneered. He was shaking, imagining Vic dangling from a rope and furious with himself for letting his thoughts go right where Lornk wanted them.
“I do. Betheljin is a house of cards that must be toppled if civilization is to survive the next age. But we must be careful which card we draw out, or humanity will descend only deeper into misery and ignominy. Slavery, war, famine, plagues—these will become the daily bread of every human in Knownearth unless Parnden is ousted.”
“You want me to help you execute a coup? What in the Shrine makes you think I would?”
Lornk’s mouth tilted upward. “Because I’m your only hope to find your wife.”
In Latha, Geram withdrew from the sparring match and stood beside the water barrel, nursing a cup and paying close attention. The ghosts of Ashel’s fingers itched. This was why he followed Lornk here.
“Come to the library,” said Lornk. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
Only the Academy in Narath, and perhaps the Archive on Caleisbahnin, held more embossed and ancient volumes than the Korng library. The Device was in a chamber below, and last autumn, Ashel had stood here after escaping captivity in Olmlablaire, debating whether to take ship for Latha or return to Relm to protect his sister and Vic. He rubbed the severed knuckles, wondering what the cost of a different choice would have been.
Lornk retrieved a map and unfurled it on the table. It showed the southern half of the Isthmus, lands that included Kragnash, Relm, and Latha. Kragnash was painted in swirling greens, as if to depict the rainforest that once stood there. Near the compass printed on the blue-painted sea, someone had written, “In remembrance of shared nightmares.”
“Sashal stole this map when we were twelve. The inscription is his,” Lornk said.
Ashel’s chest felt hollow as he studied the loops and slant. The penmanship echoed his father’s style and could be the boy’s version of the man’s hand.
“As boys we traveled between Latha, Relm, and here as often as we could slip away from our studies,” Lornk continued. “Once we used the Device between Olmlablaire and Narath, and it . . . slipped. We arrived in the Manor’s throne room, but it was the wrong room and the wrong time.
“It was as if we were dreaming. We saw ourselves as grown men, and my elder self was king of a single nation encompassing Relm and Latha. Notice there’s no border on this map, but the rivers and cities are marked.” He chuckled. “Elekia was my queen, and you my firstborn and heir.”
“Sounds like a fitting fantasy for an ambitious boy,” Ashel snarled.
Lornk chuckled. “I met your mother three years later. She was the first person I encountered in this world whom I saw in that one; Victoria—and you—were the last. Your wife’s destiny lies here.” He tapped the X labeled Direiellene. “In this strange place and time, Sashal and I learned the Council had lost the war against Meylnara, and in the aftermath, the Kragnashians conquered and enslaved all of humanity. My older self was a king, but also a subject of Kragnashian overlords who kept humans as cattle. I watched myself give them Victoria to feed upon. That is the threat we face. The one she was born to stop, and the one I would have prepared her for had she stayed here, where she belonged.”
“Only a madman would rationalize his depravities as a tactic to save the world!”
“There is method and purpose to everything I do. Victoria would have been far better prepared for her destiny, had she stayed with me. Elekia didn’t tell her what to expect when she sent her to Kragnash, did she? Your parents told her nothing, taught her nothing, and they knew her fate.”
“You’re the one who sold her to the Kragnashians.”
Lornk laughed bitterly. “Do you think I expected her to be in eastern Fembrosh?”
“Isn’t that why you had me kidnapped?”
“No! You are my son and a man with untapped potential who will be vital to me in ousting Parnden.”
Heart pounding, he struggled to keep his hands from Lornk’s throat. “A Kragnashian tried to take her from the Manor the night the pirates broke you out of prison.”
“The Kragnashian who took Victoria from the Kiareinoll was no ally of mine. I wanted her help overthrowing Parnden before she went to Direiellene to meet the destiny I would have prepared her for.”
“This is preposterous.”
“It is the truth. Since Sashal and I escaped from that place, I have researched the War of the Council and the other momentous events in Knownearth’s history. There have been disparities between what the written histories say and what people claimed to remember, as if a change occurred in time. The Caleisbahnin call these changes Concordances. A Concordance occurred a thousand years ago when the historical Victoria of Ourtown slew Meylnara the Oppressor. The disappearance of the contemporary Victoria of Ourtown confirms we are approaching another Concordance now, in this time as well as the past. Your wife is the same woman who fought in the War of the Council, and I believe she is now there in that time and place. I also believe what happens here and now in Traine will determine whether we are free or slaves for generations, perhaps millennia, perhaps forever.”
He is insane, Geram said. Use the Device and come home.
Lornk tapped the inscription. “Sashal knew the Concordance was coming. Why else would he have made Victoria his ward? Why push her into the military and turn a scholar into a warrior? And why did Elekia send her to Kragnash, where she knew Victoria would be given the Waters of the Dead? Your parents knew her destiny as well as I.”
Ashel’s voice shook in time with the blood pulsing through his neck. “Time travel is not possible.”
“It’s no less preposterous than trees birthing people or spacefarers settling this world. Or the miracles of mindspeech and wizardry. The Device is beneath us—I won’t stop you using it to go ask your mother if I’m lying.”
“All you do is lie.”
“Son, that is one thing I never do.”
“You just did.” From a nearby desk, he took a pencil and paper. The Device in Latha was locked against incursions from Relm or Traine, but even during the height of the war it was checked once a day for messages. Finishing a note, he crossed the room and shoved books aside to reveal a hidden knob. A pull, and the bookcase swung open on a tunnel through the bedrock. Sconces flickered as he descended to a black knob set in a compass rose fashioned from porcelain and set with blue gemstones. He dropped the note into the shallow depression in the stone, shoved the knob into the southernmost slot, and stepped back. The note faded away like sugar in a glass of water.
“It may be some time before she picks that up,” Lornk said, standing behind him.
“I’ll wait.” Crossing his arms, he glared at the other man. “Alone.”
“We’ll leave it open on this end. You’re always welcome here, son.” Smirking, Lornk took a few steps up the passage, then turned back. “This room will be guarded—in case Elekia gets any ideas about sending troopers, remind her the Device is a choke point.”
I’ll tell Elekia you’re coming home. Geram’s feet crunched on the gravel path back to the manor.
Send a message back to me first. I don’t want Lornk knowing about us. Geram agreed, and Ashel waited an hour for a note to appear beside the gems. He stepped into the depression, and pins prickled his skin, a feverish tingle that spread to his toes and his eyebrows. All went dark, blacker than a lightless dungeon. His blood stopped, then gushed through his veins. Light flooded his eyes, and he stood behind Latha’s throne. Half a dozen guards watched him step off the dais.
“The queen will see you upstairs, Highness,” Selcher said.
Ashel glanced at the guards, most of whom he didn’t know, and strode toward the doors leading into the manor. Geram waited with his mother in her small parlor. Tell her to meet me in Vic’s room, he said.
Hurrying after him, Selcher scowled, no doubt Hearing and disapproving of his making demands of the Ruler.
Her scowl deepened. “Nine days. King Rivern and the Relmlady sent soldiers everywhere looking for them. We thought they’d been taken by outlaws or a press gang.”
“What did they say when they came back?”
“Your mother—”
“You were there, Selcher. What did my father say?”
She narrowed her eyes. “He said it was a nightmare. He dedicated himself to rearing you to be different.”
His skin pebbled with cold. “Different from what?”
“From the vainglorious scoundrel he met in that other place.”
He charged up the stairs two at a time, leaving Selcher behind, and burst into Vic’s room.
His mother stood on a carpet woven into a pattern of flowers and rushes.
“Where is the rug showing the War of the Council?”
“It was ruined in the attack.”
A trembling weakness washed through him. Gritting his teeth, he locked his knees. “Is it true, Mother?”
“Is what true?”
His heart beat his ribs like a prisoner striking the bars of a cage, a voice inside him yelling, All of it! He asked the most pressing question. “Is it true you and Father knew Vic was the One? Not that she simply bore the same name as someone who lived a thousand years ago, but that she is the same person?”
“We did not know that.”
“Then why in the Shrine did you give her the bedchamber with that particular rug?”
Her lips twisted, but she didn’t respond.
“Beth and I played on that rug when we were children. Where did it come from?”
“Sashal commissioned it after you were born.”
Sorrow and fury warred within him. “He knew they might take her, and he did nothing about it except give her a Shrinejumping rug?”
Elekia’s shoulders crimped, and she folded into a wizened crone. “We did everything we could to keep her safe.”
“Safe? You made her become a soldier. You sent her to Kragnash so they could give her a power that is killing her, and now they’ve taken her!”
“I have requested an audience with the Center.”
“An audience? You should be sending soldiers.”
“You know nothing about Kragnashians if you think this nation could muster the force required to combat them in their own land. You didn’t see the damage a single warrior did in this very room.”
“Then why aren’t you going to Kragnash yourself and tearing the place apart? You’re a bloody wizard!”
“I cannot expose myself as one or I’d lose what leverage I have as Ruler. Negotiating the return of your sisters will take time, especially as we have little to trade. You must be patient.”
Seething, he thought of Lornk’s snide invitation to return, and his missing fingers ached to curl into a fist and smash the expectant smirk from the fiend’s face. Yet his mother’s plea for patience stung like salt in an open wound. “If you cannot help them, I will find someone who can.”
“Lornk will not help your sisters,” she spat.
“Vic isn’t my sister,” he grated. “Is Lornk my father?”
Her nostrils flared as she drew her shoulders back and raised her chin. “He is a villain.”
Pain squeezed his chest. “Do you even know?”
“When Sashal died, you and I, we held him between us and wept together. That is the only knowledge that matters.”
A sour breath gushed out, along with any trust he’d ever had in her. “You can never give a straight answer. Goodbye, Mother.”
The Consequence of Ignorance
Bethniel winced at each dab of the washcloth. Fiery welts webbed over her cheeks and forehead, striped her fingers and the backs of her hands. Everything stung, and she prayed the abrasions wouldn’t scar. Rinsing the cloth, she swiped it once more over her face and looked in the mirror. “Lovely,” she muttered, wishing for the pot of face powder on her vanity. Homesickness rose up, clogged throat and nose with longing, and she swallowed hard, squashing it all into the box where fear and anger belonged. Blubbering wouldn’t help Vic.
Neither would a desperate wild woman. As she tamed rogue curls, her thoughts whirled through meager knowledge of the Council period: the Council had fought Meylnara, and their war had destroyed the rainforest of Direiellene, leaving behind the vast wasteland she and Vic had crossed to rescue Ashel from Olmlablaire.
Poor Ashel! He must be mad with worry, and if he were here, he’d know what to say and do to get Vic where she belonged. If only she’d taken his course on the Council! She’d always avoided his classes so she wouldn’t have to endure her friends ogling him. Why hadn’t those ninnies chattered about his knowledge instead of the fit of his damn trousers?
She shoved the if-onlys into the box with homesickness, fear, and anger. No point dwelling on what couldn’t be changed. The woman in the mirror blinked the creases from her eyes, donning a semblance of confident serenity before she put on the clothes Thabean’s servants had brought. Victoria of Ourtown was a member of the Council. Her deeds—whatever they were—were a matter of record. The Council would rescue her. History had deemed it so.
Clinging to that certainty, she shimmied into a clean shift, then stared at the bewildering array of sashes and slits on an embroidered silk overgown.
Someone cleared a throat, and she spun round to find Thabean eying her through a gap in the privacy screen. Mortification heated her cheeks—how long had he been there?
“Flagrant tardiness may be the prerogative of future sovereigns in your land, but it will not endear you to Saelbeneth.”
Swallowing ire, she emerged from the bathing area, robe in hand. “I don’t know how to tie this.”
His eyes flicked over his own garment and its complex fastenings. “The flat panel goes in front. Slip it on.” She thrust her arms into the sleeves, then shivered as a static charge crackled through the silk. Sashes wove through slits and round each other, binding the gown closed.
“Too tight?” His eyes grazed her figure.
She took a breath, working hard to keep it steady. “No. Thank you.”
He looked over the spacious tent with its silk partitions and the bower where’d she’d spent a fretful, sleepless night. “I hope you found the accommodations suitable, Your Highness.”
She ignored the sarcasm cloaking her title and copied his formal manner of speaking. “Please, sir. I would have you call me by my name only: Bethniel.”
Smirking, he unstoppered a decanter and streamed pale wine into a cup. “Bethniel of . . . ? You haven’t told me from whence you hail.”
“Might I remind you of your warning against tardiness?”
“And I would warn my Council leader against spies and charlatans. Saelbeneth agreed to meet you because she is curious why so strange a trio was expelled from Meylnara’s Lair—more importantly, why you were there in the first place.”
“Yesterday you refused to hear my plea—why do you want it now?”
He drained the cup and tilted it toward her. “Look at the hospitality with which you—a possible spy—have been treated. Perhaps you should respond in kind, with the truth.”
Her brow knit. “I have not lied to you, sir.”
“You mentioned a prophesy.”
Squaring her shoulders, she raised an eyebrow. “I do not wish to be late for my audience with Saelbeneth. I will explain everything to her.”
He twirled his hand in a mocking salute. “As you wish, Your Highness.”
Lillem fell in beside her as she exited the tent. “What did he want? I tried to stop him going inside, but he froze my bloody limbs; then some barrier kept me from following him in.”
“He wanted me to hurry up,” Bethniel muttered as they followed Thabean down a narrow alley between tent stakes. “We are his guests, lieutenant. Antagonizing him or
any other wizard won’t help us gain their aid.”
“My duty, Highness, is to protect you.”
“Where’s Gustave?” she asked, teeth grinding.
“I sent him to his own people,” Thabean tossed over his shoulder.
Regretting she couldn’t consult with the pirate, Bethniel followed the wizard down a wide lane past neat rows of tents busy with soldiers, farriers, and smiths. The Council’s encampment was huge. Minutes stretched and footsteps multiplied as they approached a central area occupied by two gigantic pavilions with a lone tree towering between them. One structure was plain white canvas stretched taut over a massive frame. Banners flapped from multiple peaks on the other, its walls a riot of color and patterns, from scrolling scarlet to rippling azure. “The Council hall,” Thabean waved at the wildly colored pavilion. “The hospital, the lookout station. Saelbeneth’s camp is directly opposite mine.” He led them on into a wedge bustling with soldiers chattering in Old Lathan.
“These people haven’t seen much action,” Lillem muttered. “Everything’s too clean and orderly.”
“Did you talk to anyone last night?”
“No. I slept outside your tent entrance.”
They came to a pavilion walled in elaborately patterned erinsheen. An aide led them down a fabric-walled corridor and into a room lit with dozens of glowing orbs that floated near the ceiling. Lillem stopped dead; Bethniel had to pinch him to get him to move out of the doorway.
A handsome woman with spiraling brown curls smiled from a table laid with tea and bread.
A man seated beside her sneered. “Are these the vagabonds you found near the Lair?”
“Madam,” Thabean said, “this audience does not concern Nelchior.”
“It must if you’d rather I not hear it,” rejoined the other man.
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