The crowd edged back to give him space.
Venin was last.
“What is this?” Jameson stared at the gathered throng.
Venin knelt before him. “These are the Erriani you and Alix saved.”
Jameson’s jaw dropped open. There were hundreds. The events of the night before were mostly a blur, but surely it couldn’t have been this many.
He got unsteadily to his feet. It was hot. Sweat ran down his back in rivulets. He wiped his brow and searched for something to say. Now he knew how Xander had felt in Gaelan.
“Hello,” he managed.
The crowd shuffled, looking at one another and back at him.
Someone broke from the pack and ran up to him. It was a boy, maybe six or seven, too young to have his wings. He reminded Jameson immediately of Morgan.
“I can’t find my mam.”
Jameson looked at Venin, who shrugged as if to say, you can’t save them all.
Jameson couldn’t accept that. He scooped up the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Tevin.”
“Well, Tevin, we’re going to find her soon and bring her back to you. I promise.”
Tevin nodded. “I want to come with you.”
“Come with me where?”
“To fight the landers.”
“Ah.” Jameson looked him in the eye. “You’re very brave, I see. But I’ll tell you what—I have a more important mission for you. I need you here to help me take care of all these folks. Can you do that for me?”
Tevin nodded, wide-eyed.
“Your mother will be really proud of you.” He set the boy down. Not for the first time since he’d met Xander, he wondered if he would ever have children of his own. To the assembled crowd, he said, “Hello. I’m Jameson.”
That was stupid. They know who I am. Venin must have told them.
“My Erriani name is Lyrin. My mother was the Queen of Errian. I was taken from her twenty-five years ago, on the night she died.” He closed his eyes. The shared memory of that dark night was still fresh in his mind. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the spurt of blood from her neck as Danner Black slit her throat.
The crowd was mumbling. He realized he’d gone quiet for a long moment.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long, well, month, but last night was particularly tiring.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his arm. “I need anyone who knows the House of the Sun well to help me plan what to do next. And if you have other information or knowledge that might help, I want to talk to you too.”
The gathered Erriani looked at one another and shrugged. They had wanted something more.
He wasn’t like Xander. He couldn’t just deliver a rousing speech on tap. “We will get Errian back. I promise.”
There was a halfhearted cheer.
Venin stepped up beside him. “Jameson is a good man. He helped shift the world to save us all—”
“He brought the landers down upon us?” one man shouted.
“He should have left them all to die,” said another.
Several skythane glared at Alix and edged forward.
Venin growled. “Jameson could have left you all to die. Instead he came back to Errian. Back to his home. And he exhausted himself saving each and every one of you.”
“Aren’t you Gaelani?” one of the men said.
“Sevyrn Triani, sit yourself down,” a calm but stern voice said. The elderly woman who had kissed his forehead stepped out of the crowd to stare the heckler down.
Sevyrn glared at Venin a moment longer before dropping his gaze to the ground. “Sorry, Mistress Halta.” Then he actually sat down.
Jameson wanted to laugh.
“Get back to whatever you were doing,” she called to the crowd. It began to melt away. “Vestra Halta, acting Regent of Errian, at your service.” She completed a surprisingly nimble curtsey for a woman of her age, which he estimated to be in her sixties. “Don’t worry about these louts.” She waved them off. “They’re quick to anger, but loyal as squamwats when you win them over.”
He had no idea what a squamwat was, but he decided to take her word for it. He bowed before her. “Glad you’re here.”
She snorted. “No need for all that fuss. And don’t listen to Sevyrn. You’re not what we expected, that’s all. Come on. We have much to discuss.” She pulled him and the others along after her, into the jungle. She led them to a small clearing by a stream half a kilometer into the jungle from the lagoon.
“There aren’t any of those cat-spider things here, are there?”
Vestra shook her head. “Met one of those, did you?”
“On the way to Errian.”
“Lucky to come away with all your body parts, then. Martach don’t usually let their victims go.” She settled herself on a rock in the middle of the clearing, staring around her at the jungle. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to this place.”
“You know this island?”
She smiled. Her missing teeth did nothing to detract from the look of pure joy on her face. “Oh yes. This is where young couples often come when they are first paired.”
“Oh, like a honeymoon spot.”
She nodded. “You could call it that. No one lives here, and none of Titania’s larger predators do either.” She put her hands on her makeshift cane and looked up at him. “You have a key.” It was not a question.
Jameson looked over at Venin and Alix, then nodded.
“May I see it?”
“Um… sure.” He opened his carry sack and pulled it out, handing it to her.
She held it up to the sunlight, squinting at it. “Very nice. I haven’t seen one of these in twenty years. I wasn’t sure any still existed.” She handed it back to him. “Nor one who knew how to use it properly.” She looked over the three of them, cocking her head. “I imagine there’s a story to be told about how a lander, a Gaelani, and the King of Errian came to be together just in time to try to save Errian from the OberCorp onslaught?”
Jameson smiled. He liked this woman. “It’s a long one.”
“I have time.” She sat on a log and crossed her hands over her knee.
So Jameson related what had happened since he’d come to Oberon. Had it really been just a couple weeks before?
Far from being surprised, Vestra nodded as he told his story. She did raise an eyebrow, though, when he told her what Quince had done to the two of them. When he was finished, she was silent for a long moment, with her eyes closed. Jameson thought she might have fallen asleep. He glanced at Venin, who shrugged.
Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Your arrival was well timed, given the circumstances.” Her cold blue eyes searched his. “Too well timed. How do I know for certain that you are who you claim to be?”
He pulled out his sigil, the golden sun that Quince had given him, for her to examine. She cradled it in her hand for a second, then let it drop back to his chest. “Easy enough for you to have stolen that from someone.” She reached up and grasped his cheeks in her old, dry hands, and something electric passed through them. Jameson fell backward through time, his memories stirring up around him again like crows. Only this time, they were his memories.
Looking down on Oberon from Titania Station.
Playing a game with a little boy on the shuttle to keep him from being afraid as they passed the Split.
Riding on Xander’s bike as they evaded the enforcers over Oberon City.
Blasting a hoversport to bits with a pulse rifle.
Wereverens. Swamp Bears. The Lost City. The Gateway.
The memories swirled past him faster and faster, until he only got a glimpse of colors and faces. Until the shift.
He stood with Xander, holding Morgan’s hand as the boy vanished into nothing.
Vestra let him go, and he sucked in a lungful of air as if he hadn’t breathed for an hour.
She was staring up at him with a look of awe, her mouth open and her face lit by a golden glow. “I didn’t believe it. Not really. Bu
t you’re the one.”
“The one?”
“The one who has come to save us.” She squeezed his hands. “I’ve studied the old scrolls all my life and thought most of it was simple clap trap. Until now.” She sank down onto her rock. “Few enough of us have the gift.”
“The scrolls?” There was so much he wanted to know.
“The oldest records of the Erriani.”
“I’d love to see them.”
“If the landers don’t destroy them, it would be my pleasure to make that happen.”
Venin nodded. “We had some in Gaelan, but they only go back a couple hundred years.”
One question burned in Jameson’s mind above all others. “Did you know my mother?”
Vestra took his hand again, her own shaking. “I did. The night she died was the most terrible one of my life. The bells rang out, and I ran into her chambers to find her dead on the ground, her throat slit from ear to ear.” She mimed it with a gnarled finger. “I can still see it after all these years. It was a terrible thing.”
“I remember.”
“You were gone as well. But you were far too young at the time. How can you remember it?” She looked away, as if remembering something herself. “You have the gift as well.”
“Quince told me about it, but it was like I could see it in my own head. Like I really remembered it myself.”
“You were touched by the gods.”
He laughed at that. “That’s the same thing Quince said.”
“She was right. She was one of my pupils. She also spent long hours in the archives, studying the scrolls.”
“So, what happened after my mother died?”
“I supposed you would ask. Her husband, King Jerroll Madainn, thought the Gaelani were responsible for the attack, and he swore to find and bring you home. No one knew what Quince and the Gaelani queen had done, then.” She sighed. “He started war with the Gaelani, and it raged on for seven weeks. So many terrible things done in the name of a misunderstanding.”
“More of a deception.” He could still see Danner Black’s eyes as the man slit his mother’s throat.
“Yes, in fact, though we didn’t know it at the time. Danner Black was a confidant of the king, and we didn’t discover the betrayal he had perpetrated until much later. There was a bloody war, and many Erriani and Gaelani perished. But it came to an abrupt end, after Ballifor.”
“I’ve been there.”
“So you know. Danner’s men smuggled a new kind of weapon in from Oberon, and when we saw what he had done… the war was over. Unfortunately, the dying was not. Black’s daughter, Dani, killed the king in his sleep, hoping to clear the way for her father to assume the throne.”
“So Dani is truly skythane.”
“Yes. She was captured, and as a punishment, her wings were cut off and she was exiled—the Cattorah, it’s called. It was a barbaric act, worse than death, one that hadn’t been done for hundreds of years. But nothing less would serve for the crime she committed.” Her eyes assumed a faraway cast. “I was the Chief Archivist. In the absence of an heir, they made me Regent. I have been so ever since.”
“And Danner?” He looked at her intently.
“He vanished. No one has seen him since.”
“I have.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When?”
“Today. He was in the plaza, in Errian.” Jameson closed his eyes. “He had my fiancée. Ex-fiancée.”
“Xander?”
“No. The woman I was supposed to marry. Before I came here.” He still didn’t understand what had possessed Jessa to come to Oberon.
“Ah. She followed you.”
“I think so.” Jameson scratched his chin.
She looked down at her hands. “Very interesting. So now we must figure out how to strike back at them.”
“Yes. We’ll have more fighters at hand in two or three days. The Gaelani are coming, with Xander. At least six hundred of them.”
“After what you showed me… you aren’t together?”
Jameson shook his head. “After we discovered what Quince had done, dosing us with pith… he needed some time.” Damn him and his doubts.
“I see.” She stood, rustling her gray wings and stretching her back with an audible click. “Don’t ever get old, boys. It’s hell.”
Jameson laughed in spite of himself. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He closed his eyes and saw Jessa again, being dragged across the plaza by Danner Black.
“We’ll figure it out, my liege.” Vestra pulled a chain over her head. On it hung a golden ring. “This was your father’s. I think he would want you to have it.” She freed it from the chain and handed it over to him. “I have so much more to tell you. And to teach you.”
He bowed to her. “I’m honored.”
She chuckled. “Charmer, aren’t you.” She sat down once more. “There are things about Errian that only a few of us know….”
Chapter Seventeen: Crossroads
XANDER LOOKED at the world with fresh eyes. He tried to see it as the first skythane settlers might have, a new wide-open world ripe for colonization. An enigma too—the hidden second half of Oberon.
How long had the two halves been separated for such diverse ecologies to have sprung up? Or had they somehow been different to begin with?
Toward nightfall, he and his companions encountered one of the smaller Erriani towns outside of the capital. They were deep in Erriani territory now. The town was surrounded on three sides by a loop of the Orn River. What had once been neatly tilled fields were now filled with mud. They surrounded a hill topped by treehouses, whose village square was a wide, wooden platform built about ten meters above the ground in the middle of the encircling trees.
Xander couldn’t help thinking that Jameson would love this place.
He decided to stop and talk to the locals, to share his news and maybe bolster their forces. Xander and his companions landed on the platform, looking around for anyone to greet them.
“Hello?” he called.
The place was a ghost town.
He looked at Alia, who shrugged. “It looks like whoever lived here abandoned the village.”
“Maybe so.” The silence was creepy, filled only by the wind through the trees and the creaking of the wooden platform beneath their feet. “Let’s all take a look around. We’ll meet here in about ten minutes.”
From the central square, rope bridges led up into the trees. Xander chose one at random and started off into the foliage. The bridge swayed under his weight. The path led up to a cluster of structures—homes?—built among the branches, below the purple canopy.
He stepped into one of them. It was a dwelling of some sort, open to the air, with wide eaves above to keep out the worst of the rain. Spices were hung to dry. He rubbed one of the leaves and smelled his fingers. The leaf gave off a pungent smell somewhat akin to rosemary with a hint of cinnamon. He’d have to ask Alia what it was.
“Hello?” he called, feeling self-conscious.
There was clearly no one here. A pile of dirty wooden dishes lay in one corner, and the whole place looked like it had been hastily abandoned.
There was a shout from the direction of the square.
Xander turned and ran back the way he had come.
He clambered down the rope bridge, setting it to sway wildly back and forth.
Rix was facing off with a pair of white-winged skythane, a man and a woman who looked to be in their midforties. The man had a wicked-looking spear, and the woman held a pulse rifle.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Xander came up slowly behind Rix, his palms spread wide.
Alia, Harrol, and Zenia arrived just behind him.
“You need to leave,” the woman said between gritted teeth. “We don’t want you here in Taycrob.” She swung the barrel of the rifle around to point at him.
“We’re not here to hurt you.” Xander held his hands out, trying to stay calm. Where in the Split did they get a pulse rifle?
&
nbsp; “We know what you and your lander friends did to Errian.”
“What happened to Errian?” Is Jameson okay?
“The Gaelani invaded, with help from OberCorp. That’s what.” The man spat. “As if you didn’t know.”
“Look, it wasn’t us. Or my people. I’m here to help. We came from Gaelan to fight the landers.”
“Sure ya did. How can we trust you? My son Arrol saw Gaelani—them with the dark wings—fighting alongside the landers in Errian yesterday.”
“Danner Black and his men,” Alia hissed.
Xander nodded. And probably Kadin and Dani. “Inside my carry sack, I have a pulse rifle like that one that we took from the invaders in Gaelan. Alia here has one too.” He put his hands in the air. “Go ahead. Take them. Then we can talk.”
Alia shot him a look. “Xander, no—”
“Just do it, Alia.”
She put her hands in the air reluctantly.
The woman covered them while the man came forward to rummage through their sacks. He pulled out one and then the other rifle before stepping back behind the woman.
“Okay, see that bridge over there?” She gestured off to her left. “Single file across it to our community hall.” Her hands were shaking.
“What’s your name?” Xander tried his best to look nonthreatening. They were scared.
“I’ll tell you when I decide if I can trust you. Get moving.”
He turned around, and she poked him in the back with the pulse rifle snout to urge him along.
Xander’s mind was racing. What the hell happened in Errian?
He followed Alia, Rix, Harrol, and Zenia in a single-file line. The bridge led to a circle of large trees, their branches spread out like great palms. The community hall was open to the air, shielded only by the branches and their purple foliage. It was a wide space, the floor boards shined to a high gloss.
“Sit.” The woman indicated a place under the shade of one of the trees.
They did as they were told, sinking down to take a seat on the hard floorboards.
“What do you want to know?” Xander kept his hands out, palms up to show he was no threat.
“Who are you, and why are you here?”
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