Rhea barked a laugh.
“And he’s headed in the wrong direction, like the old one thought,” the woman in the blue dress said. “He should be farther north than this. And east.”
“And you almost just got yourself killed,” the ruddy woman said. “You should thank whoever spelled that coat for you. It probably saved your life.”
Nolan flushed, but his mind was racing. “The old one—you mean Edeva?” he asked. “She knows where we are?”
The old man shook his head. “She has no name here. But she said you turned and headed south in a hurry. Thought maybe you’d given up putting things to rights.” The man squinted at him. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Well we’re not. I’m not,” Nolan said. He explained briefly about Rhea, while she glared balefully at everyone in the room.
The old man scowled. “You were a fool to have let someone so…poisonous…come near you in the first place.”
“We thought there might be more to it than a loss of will,” the ruddy-faced woman said. “We knew you’d have to cross through Kovin, so the strongest of us have been watching for you. And having our friends watch for foreigners.”
“But wait—if Edeva’s talked to you, why doesn’t she come then and undo it all?” Nolan asked sharply. “She’s the one who cast the spell. Why doesn’t she ‘put everything to rights’?”
“It’s beyond even her power, for a time,” the old man said. “And it is not how these things are done.”
“Not how these things are done?” Kris asked. “Those burns could have killed him, and you just healed them in two minutes. Put your power together if you have to. You must know how, if you can heal something like that.”
“And who are you?” the woman in the blue dress asked. “The other girl stole the star-jar, but you aren’t a part of this.”
“I’m Kris. It’s my world trapped in that jar.”
“So the rumors are true,” the ruddy faced woman murmured. “They really are from another world.”
“And this alien girl is trying to ruin everything,” the old man growled. He pointed at Rhea with his cane.
She kicked the cane away. “Only from their point of view.”
“You’d kill your own people?” the ruddy-faced woman asked. “Your whole world?”
Rhea glowered. “They’re probably going to die anyway.”
“We’ve been through this,” Kris said. “And if you people would just help—send us to the caves if you can’t reverse it—”
“We can’t help. Not that directly,” the woman in the blue dress said.
“Can’t or won’t?” Nolan asked.
“Can’t,” the ruddy woman said. “It disrupts the course the old one set in motion. Even she can’t break it once something like this has started. It can only make things worse.”
Of course not, Nolan thought bitterly. That would just be too easy.
“Then…thank you for healing me,” he said. “But we’re in a hurry. We should go.”
“And what will you do with this one?” The woman in the blue dress pointed at Rhea.
Nolan hesitated and exchanged a glance with Kris.
“Leave her for the magni,” Kris said. “Or the wolves.”
“Nothing like old friends,” Rhea said.
“You’re not the friend I had in Rusam.”
Nolan swallowed. Killing in a fight had been one thing. He wasn’t sure if he could murder in cold blood. Or leave someone to die of exposure.
“We’ll keep her here,” the old man said. “We know how to handle her type.”
The blue-dressed woman raised her eyebrows. “We can do that? After already healing him?”
He nodded curtly. “That girl wasn’t even here when the spell was cast. We can interfere with her.”
“Thank you,” Nolan said sincerely. “You’ll need to keep her hands tied. That necklace is keeping her magic in check.”
“I can tell what the necklace does, boy.”
“I’m not some piece of luggage you can just pawn off on—”
Nolan cut Rhea off sharply. “They just saved your life,” he said. “I’d thank them.”
The mages gave them bread, cheese, dried pork, and hay, and stripped Nila of the pack with Rhea’s gear. They pointed them back to the same narrow border crossing Yohanna suggested, back in the northeast. Rhea had lied about her easier crossing. No surprise there, at this point. And then there was nothing more to say. Within twenty minutes of meeting the odd, powerful witches, Nolan and Kris were on their way north again, racing the daylight.
They set a grueling pace for themselves, stopping just enough to let Nila and Star drink when they came through a stream where Nolan could kick through the top layer of ice. The day had been surreal, from the fight with the baker, to getting the best of Rhea and being rid of her, to the miraculous healing on Nolan. He felt exhausted, but he pushed on, mile after mile. They’d lost so much ground. So much time.
Darkness fell a few hours after they’d left the witches’ cottage. He and Kris both watched the deepening night silently. Nolan wished the star-jar were brighter, or that they could risk the danger of traveling by night, but he also felt ready to collapse.
“Sit,” Kris said finally. “That’s the best we can do for today.”
She lit a fire of impressive strength, and inexpertly maneuvered the packs off of Star and Nila while Nolan cut apart pieces of the bread and cheese, marveling at how well his hands worked so soon after the fight with Rhea. If it weren’t for the uneven, patchy skin he knew was there, no one would ever have known he’d been burned. And he sent silent thanks to his mother for whatever she’d done to the coat that had helped. It was her, the ruddy woman said, that probably saved his life and the star-jar both.
“I’m glad your power’s come back. I hadn’t been sure how much you’d healed,” Nolan ventured at the end of the meal. Both of them had finished chewing, but neither made any move towards their bedrolls. It was easier to stay seated by the fire then to go through the trouble of rolling out cold bedding. And it was so good, after so long, to be able to speak to her without worrying about Rhea’s eavesdropping.
Kris nodded. “I’m not myself, but I’m close. I think I can even fight again if we have to.” She glanced at her wrist, where Nolan knew her bracelet lay beneath her layers of clothing.
“Well hopefully we won’t have to. We’ve changed direction so much they might have lost us for a little while. And once we’re into Ustengard—”
Kris held up a hand. It vanished. Nolan started to smile, the first time he’d felt that pull on cheek muscles in a long time. She grinned back impishly. “I’ve been practicing. Whenever Rh…whenever she couldn’t see.” Kris’s smile disappeared.
“So we might really have a chance now,” Nolan said, forcing as much optimism into the sentence as he could.
She nodded. “We might. But we’ll need to be quick. And we have a long trek ahead.” She closed her hand, and the campfire faded. “We should get some sleep.”
After he’d crawled into his bedroll, Nolan could tell by the rustling sounds that followed that Kris was digging out the star-jar. When the rustling stopped, the darkness of the night didn’t lessen at all. Nolan waited, holding his breath, but Kris didn’t say another word.
“It’s still…we’re not too late, are we?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s still there. Barely. We might have…two weeks?”
Nolan rolled over. With a face like stone, Kris uncurled herself and pushed the star-jar closer to him. Tiny pin-pricks of light, no more, hung in an inky space.
“We’ll make it.”
“If you wake up first, shake me. Don’t wait.”
“Okay.”
Much later, Nolan heard Kris crying softly. After a few minutes of wishing that he’d followed his father’s advice to always have handkerchiefs on hand around women, Nolan decided to just pretend to be asleep. There was nothing he could do except wake up early, and push as fa
st as he could the next morning.
The weather was with them for the next three days—it dawned cool and clear, and by midday the air warmed enough to where Nolan could take the scarf off of his face. They marched on as quickly as they could lead Star and Nila, the only people that Nolan saw traveling north all three days. At night, or an hour past sunset when they finally admitted it was night, the temperature plummeted. After an hour of shivering, Nolan finally saw Nila lying down and laid his bedroll along her back, but nothing could convince Kris to do the same.
At the end of the third day’s frantic march north, they finally saw the village marked on the border of Ustengard’s strip. Looking down on it, Nolan saw a stone wall higher than his head at the far end of the village, and then a steep drop to the Ustengard strip—only a valley here, no more than five miles across. Just a way for soldiers and miners to get from one site to another. Nolan silently cursed Rhea for leading them so far astray, and himself for believing her lies so easily.
The forest ended abruptly with the valley, and from there rose only steep, snow-covered, jagged peaks for as far as Nolan could see. If the sight hadn’t been so cold and desolate, it would have also been beautiful. Nolan’s first thought at seeing the range that he was about to enter was of an old, crafty dragon straight out of folklore, bearing its teeth and daring him to continue. These were, without a doubt, the Twilight Mountains.
“We’ll have to leave Star and Nila here,” he said aloud. “Like Yohanna said—horses can’t climb those mountains. I don’t even think Nila should.”
Kris, watching the mountains intently, only nodded.
They spent what little remained of the afternoon finding fresh supplies and shedding themselves of everything but the bare necessities. Nolan gave away his spare set of clothing and, after a little thought, all of their dishes except the cook pot, his knife, and two spoons. A no-nonsense farmer with gentle hands took Nila. Nolan couldn’t guess the profession of the young man who took Star, but he at least looked kind. He waited patiently while Nolan gave her a last parting stroke on her forehead. Nolan hoped she found a good life.
By unspoken agreement, he and Kris booked themselves into a room above the tavern. Nolan paused briefly at a mirror on the inn’s wall. It had been months since he’d looked at his own face, and the changes made him stare. His cheeks had lost some of their rounded boyishness. The skin above them was chapped from the cold, and course. His eyes looked tired, and more like his father’s than they ever had before. Most striking of all was a patch of white skin on his right cheek, close to his ear, from where Rhea had touched him in that last fight. He thought he looked now as battle weary as any guardsman he’d ever seen passing through the Travel Peace Inn. A small, hysterical part of him thought that should make him laugh. He looked a few more moments at his new reflection, then turned and went back down to the dining room to order a meal for himself and Kris that would have fed three.
“You saw the mountains we’re going into?” Nolan asked that night after they’d each gotten into their bedrolls.
“I’m not blind.”
“You’re still sure you want to do this? You really don’t have to, I can go on alone, once we’re through the valley. You could turn back.”
“Nolan, I told you before. I’m coming with you.”
Nolan shifted slightly so he could see her better. She was lying on her back with the star-jar cradled on her chest.
“But this is mine to fix,” he insisted. “It’s not fair you should have to risk yourself for my mistake.”
“You’ve risked yourself for me. And this is my world we’re trying to save.”
“This is my fault, Kris, and this’ll be dangerous. No one’s ever come back from the Twilight Mountains in the last five hundred years. There’s…this is all or nothing, Kris. I get the wish or…there’s no coming back. You’d be safer if you stayed here.”
Kris didn’t answer right away. She set the star-jar very carefully between them and shifted so that she was half-sitting, facing him. The anger in her face was completely at odds with the quietness of her movements.
“What exactly do you think that I have to lose?” she whispered. “My brother is gone. Safe, and gone, with one of the only other people on this entire planet who knows who I am and isn’t out to get me. My best friend just turned on us, and she hates me now.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to be anywhere near her. Where do you think I’m going to go?”
“Anywhere safe. Just until I reach the Dawn Caves. Once I…with the wish…you’ll go back home when the stars are returned.”
The short bark of bitter laughter that met this statement wouldn’t have been recognizable as Kris’s laugh if Nolan hadn’t seen it leave her mouth.
“Maybe with a wish we can get the bracelet off you.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Kris admitted quietly. “But then what? Even if we can?”
“You’ll be free.”
“With no one. With nothing. I’ll never be able to see my family again, Nolan. All of my friends were mages. I have no other skills but magic. I can’t cook. Can’t sew. Can’t weave or do any of the other mundane work. Singing…too many people would see me. Someone would notice. I’m too old to start as an apprentice…”
Nolan recoiled slightly, his heart drumming. For so long, he’d only ever planned as far as getting to the Dawn Caves. Making his wish. Putting the stars back; sending the Rusamites home. Somehow keeping Tylan here.
Letting Kris go home. What came after the wish, for Kris or himself, had never seriously crossed Nolan’s mind.
“Do you have to go to Rusam? You could stay here…find Tylan, I mean, and stay with him—”
“How many favors do you really think we can ask of this mountain of yours?” Kris snapped.
They left the obvious answer unspoken. The anger left Kris’s voice when she spoke again. In its place was bitterness and an emotion Nolan couldn’t identify.
“And even if I could, what about everyone else still there? The other mages, my cousins, my mother…leaving to save Ty I could do. Leaving now, knowing I could never help them if I stayed here…I’m not sure I could do that. In Rusam there would always be a chance.”
“It’s your home.”
“Such as it is.”
“I…”
“Not everything is your fault, Nolan,” Kris said, more gently.
“It’ll still be the same, whether you come through the Twilight Mountains or not,” Nolan pointed out, just as gentle. “Once you get to Rusam…I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“But until then I can be running and hiding and alone and thinking you’re dead, or I can be climbing with you up a mountain to save my entire world. And any other worlds in there.” Kris looked away from him, shook her head, looked back. “Just give me this, Nolan,” she whispered. “Let me do this one thing.”
Nolan nodded, his throat tight. Kris settled back uneasily into her bedding and rolled away.
“Thank you,” Nolan managed finally. “I’ll be glad…not to be doing this alone.” She didn’t answer.
Nolan lay down, but sleep would not come. When was the last time that he’d given the vaguest thought to what would happen after he got to the Dawn Caves, even if…when…he got his wish? The bleak picture that Kris painted of her future left him more uneasy than the sight of the mountains they were venturing into. If they didn’t make it in time, her world and everyone in it would die. If they did make it, and made the wish, and she went home as they’d always planned…then she was left with a life of loneliness, fear and misery. And Nolan had no way to help her, no better option to offer.
With these thoughts came other equally unwelcome thoughts about Nolan’s own life after the winter solstice. Nolan could perfectly picture how his home and the stable would look in the spring. He could see his father studying a horse’s foreleg, or lighting his pipe after dinner. He could see his mother working in the garden and kneading dough. He could imagine each detail of his home, down to
just how the light in May would slant in through the house windows, and the sound of the horses chewing their hay. But Nolan couldn’t see himself there.
He wanted to go home. A part of him wanted to go home. To tell his father all that he’d seen. To hug his mother. To sleep in his own bed and wake with every smell around him as familiar as his name.
But then what? Go back to holding rich people’s stirrups? Have his mother cook his meals and darn his socks and wash his clothes?
A life that was so peaceful…so easy, after the last months…that was almost unimaginable now. The freedom from worry over problems weightier than he could properly imagine would be an incredible relief, but Nolan couldn’t imagine settling into his old rhythms again. If he returned the worlds he’d carried for the past months to their proper places, he would still never be able to stop thinking about them. If Rusam was returned, the magni would be returned as well, and Rhea too. Rusam would still be the world that enslaved Kris, her family, and the other mages, and all the while Nolan would be back in Suria leading a comfortable life.
Nolan couldn’t see how he could ever go back to being the boy who had left River’s End last spring. He was not that boy, would never be him again. And who he was now wouldn’t fit that boy’s life. What he’d done and where he’d been since leaving River’s End, those were things that were neither safe nor credible enough for him to be able to share with anyone.
And for the rest of his life Kris would be in Rusam, and he wouldn’t even know if she were alive or dead.
And there it was—that other piece of getting his wish that Nolan hadn’t considered. If Nolan made it to the Dawn Caves with Kris, and somehow got the wish…or really so many wishes, to send the stars back where they belonged, to send the Rusamites home, to free Kris and keep Tylan here with Jal…to send Kris home.
He’d never see her again.
Of course. He’d known that. So why was this a thought that should keep him awake through the night?
But of all the unpleasant revelations of the evening, knowing he would soon lose Kris—worse, that he was risking both of their lives to run the chance to return Kris to a life of misery on her world—seemed by far the most painful. But with so many lives in the balance, making the choice Rhea had was still unthinkable. Nolan risked them once to take the time to save Kris. He couldn’t think of risking them a second time. He couldn’t be that selfish, or that foolhardy.
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