by Tom Deitz
“Don’t fight it,” a voice cautioned—loud beyond enduring, when he’d heard nothing but his own languid pulse for countless ages. “I got what I could out of you, but you’ll have to bring up the rest on your own.”
Avall did, choking, retching, spitting: weak as a newborn, and desperately grateful for that warm, solid presence beside him, arms wrapped around his shoulders (bare, he noted), one hand stroking his hair away from his face even as that hair soaked his benefactor’s tunic.
Eventually, the heaving stopped. He signaled its cessation with a spontaneous relaxation and a whispered “No … more.”
But he didn’t fight as the dark-eyed youth helped him lie back into what he’d determined to be a narrow but comfortable bed in what bleary vision proclaimed was an equally narrow but comfortable room with a fireplace somewhere beyond his head, a sturdy wooden door a span beyond his feet, and a thick-paned window opposite. Which made that direction west, for that was clearly a setting sun.
“Sun,” he said again. Numbly. Unwilling—or unable—to think because the only thing to think was impossible.
“There is one,” the youth agreed. He seemed barely older than Avall’s own twenty years, dark-haired and slender, and clad in what reflex as much as memory told him was Stonecraft black and silver beneath a tabard of Warcraft crimson.
Avall nodded weakly.
The youth’s eyes narrowed with a combination of fear and concern that Avall wasn’t certain he’d ever seen before. He had a narrow face, too; more quirky than handsome. His mouth twitched, as words fought to escape and were recalled, but Avall was too tired to aid his struggles.
After all, hadn’t he just been dead?
“Are you warm enough?” the youth ventured. “I can stoke up the fire or get you more cover …”
Avall finally realized, by the sensations along his body and the items of fur-lined clothing steaming in an untidy heap before the fire, that he was naked. Which meant that this fellow had probably undressed him. And while that wouldn’t normally have bothered him, it did now, because it implied that this … stranger had seen the gem.
“I’m fine,” Avall croaked.
“Hungry?”
“I don’t know.”
Eyes narrowed further. “I have brandied cider warming by the hearth. You need to get something sweet inside you. And warm. Then we have to talk.”
Avall nodded weakly. He would deal with now, he decided. He would deal with how he came to now later; otherwise, he’d find himself staring hard at madness. “My wife’s Warcraft,” he whispered. “Her bond-sister and my twin are at War-Hold.” Neither of which facts he’d been aware of until they’d simply appeared there, on the tip of his tongue. But now that he’d said them, a horde of information came stampeding back. Wife … Sister …
No! He loved them, but dared not think on them now. He closed his eyes, felt sleep drag at him, comfortable twin to that terrible unconsciousness that had claimed him since …
Since when?
He remembered being dead, and before that he remembered being cold. And before that he remembered …
He knew, yet did not know, for that way lay fear. And behind it, responsibility and things he had to do that he dared not think of now, but that had to do with—
His fingers struggled to his chest, fumbling for what ought to lie there in a nest of wire against his flesh. He found it, and felt warmth and comfort and something he could only call recognition pour into him from that strange smooth stone.
Steps distracted him, and he eased his hand away, as the youth scooted a stool beside him. Scents came with him this time: woodsmoke, soldier’s soap, and hot spiced cider. All at once his mouth was watering. Warmth joined the scent as the youth brought a stoneware cup to Avall’s lips. He sipped, almost choked again, then drank deeply as the fumes wound their way to his brain, which then told his throat it was allowed to swallow. Avall drained half of it before the youth removed it.
“Good for you,” he said. Then shifted his gaze to Avall’s chest. “That thing burned me,” he continued. “One more thing we have to talk about—Avall,” he concluded after a pause.
“You know me?”
“I know of you. I’ve seen you around Tir-Eron.”
Avall sighed, feeling at once remarkably more focused, and more alert and wary. “And you are—?”
“Myx. Stonecraft sworn to War, and thus, apparently, double-bound to you. Your mother is Stone, is she not?”
“Clay,” Avall corrected numbly. He had no energy to spend puzzling out genealogies—not with a generation mostly absent from them, courtesy of the plague. “How did I get here?” he asked instead.
Myx shook his head. “Better I should ask you that.”
“The last thing I remember,” Avall dared, “is falling.”
Myx countered with a lopsided grin. “The first thing I knew was that I came in here a finger ago to find you lying by my fire, soaking wet, with no way you could’ve entered this place unseen, never mind this room, since that door was certainly locked.”
“So no one knows I’m here?” It was safer than confronting what Avall was still barely able to comprehend.
“No one but me—so far. But I’ll have to report you at some point. I’d rather have my facts straight when I do.”
“Where am I?”
“You truly don’t know?”
“I’m too weak to play games, Myx.”
Myx nodded warily. “On that I agree. And on the fact that you’ve been in very cold water a very long time. Unfortunately, the nearest source of that much cold water is the Ri-Eron, which is a shot away—across empty land. And if you’d come that way, the lookouts would surely have seen—”
“I’m in a tower,” Avall announced abruptly. “It fits. Your garb, these quarters, the quality of light: sunlight on expanses of snow. The question is, which tower?”
“Drink some more.”
Avall wanted to refuse, but the idea was suddenly insanely appealing. He finished the cider—under his own power—and extended the mug for more. Myx scurried off to oblige. Avall scooted higher in bed, tugged the fur coverlet close around him. Birkit fur, he noted, with a shiver of revulsion. He knew things about birkits no one else did—more things he dared not think on now.
“Eron Tower,” Myx conceded.
“The one at the top of the gorge?”
“There is only one Eron Tower.”
Joy welled up in Avall so forcefully he would’ve started from his bed had Myx not restrained him.
“You haven’t told me how you got here,” Myx reminded him, with a forcefulness that was almost, but not quite, a threat. “I’ll have to explain your presence, and craft-kin or no, I can’t explain it.”
“I don’t know myself.”
“You were wet. You weren’t frostbitten, however, or frozen—beyond your hair.”
Silence.
“The only thing that makes sense …”
“What?”
“Is that you simply appeared out of thin air.”
Avall rolled his eyes in mock dismay, even as his heart gave a twitch. He truly did not know himself—but even if that notion was preposterous, it also had an insidious sort of logic.
So people didn’t spontaneously … place-jump. They didn’t talk mind to mind, either. Or travel to the Overworld.
Except that he did—with the assistance of a certain magical gem.
A gem that had, apparently, mustered a desire from somewhere to save him.
And delivered him into friendly hands a stone’s throw from his goal.
“I have to leave,” he cried.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind! Not until I have answers. Besides, it’s almost dark and starting to snow again.”
Avall couldn’t resist a contemptuous snort. “I have no fear of the weather—not any longer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I know you’ve been out
side, if that’s what you’re getting at. I saw your clothes; I saw the frostburn on your face and hands. I saw scars on your neck. You’ve got secrets—but not as many as you’d like.”
“I’d prefer to have none,” Avall flared. “But I don’t have anything like as many answers as you think I’ve got, either. For instance, I truly have no idea how I came here.”
“But you have suspicions—you have to.”
Avall nodded slowly.
“It would seem,” Myx ventured, “that we need each other.”
“Meaning?”
Myx shrugged. “You need care, for one thing. Anyone who sees you here will ask the same questions I have. And some of them will be people who won’t take kin-claim, sketchy as it is, as rationale for silence. Eight, man, I could keep you here and starve you and make you tell your tale that way!”
Avall almost laughed aloud. “No you couldn’t! You have to have friends here; you’d have to keep them away, and anything you did to that end would look suspicious. On the other hand, you need me to remain discreet, so as not to cast aspersions on whoever was on guard tonight, who’s almost bound to be a friend of yours.”
Myx nodded slyly. “My bond-brother, actually. He’s the reason I didn’t raise the alarm first and ask questions later.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Of course! I haven’t yet because by the time I got through tending you, you’d come around.”
“You could’ve called someone when I showed up! That’s what I’d have done.”
“Would you? You walk in your room and find a near stranger in a puddle of water on your floor, unconscious and maybe dying? The dead answer no questions. And no one’s up here but me; they’re all on duty or at supper.”
“Which means they’ll be looking for you.”
Myx shook his head. “I’m known as a bit of a hermit. And I’ve not felt well of late.”
Avall took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was tired. So tired. And confused—easily as confused as Myx. But he was also close to the goal he had set however many days ago it had been. He hated to delay now. If he could only travel a few more shots. Or send a message.
But there was no one here he’d trust with one, and in any event he could navigate the distance himself in little longer than it would take to find a messenger, send him off, make the necessary connections and decisions, and return with someone Avall could trust.
Except, he realized suddenly, he had no idea how much time had passed between then and now. They—he, Rann, and Div—had been attacked. There was only one reason for that attack. Therefore someone from Gem-Hold had the same reason for reaching Tir-Eron that he did.
“What day is it?” he asked abruptly.
Myx grinned at him. “Why should I tell you? Why shouldn’t I trade information for information?”
“Because information can get you killed,” Avall replied flatly. “Because what you already know can put you in debt to a very powerful craft and clan, and earn you some very powerful enemies as well. I’ve nothing against you, but I make a better friend than foe—and nobody needs enemies.”
Myx gnawed his lip. “Can we make a deal?”
“Maybe.”
A deep breath. “I won’t say anything to anyone except my bond-brother, and I’ll swear him to bond-oath. You stay here tonight. And tomorrow night—or sooner, if we can—I’ll help you get away from here.”
“I sense conditions impending.”
“You’re no fool. Neither am I. There’s a mystery here, and if I’m going to be involved, I want to be on the right side—or at least the winning side. At the very least I want you to promise me—when you can—to tell me the truth about everything.”
Avall regarded him steadily. “If the King or The Eight do not bind me with vows that supersede it, I will do that thing. In a year and a day, I will do it.”
“Good,” Myx grinned. “Now … I’ll go seek my brother.”
Avall wanted to rise to stop him, but when he made to do so, his muscles failed—not so much from weakness as from pain. It was as though every fiber were laced with ice. It would be a long time, he suspected, before he was free of pain again.
And he wasn’t certain he had a long time. He had to get word to Eellon, Chief of his clan, about a certain revelation. And it truly was something he was better equipped to deliver in person. Never mind that Eellon was among the few with sufficient influence to silence whatever random speculation might emerge from what was even now transpiring.
But in spite of himself, he almost slipped into sleep again—or unconsciousness—though he did hear the click of a key in the lock when Myx departed.
As soon as he was alone, he took a deep breath—it was like breathing fire—cleared his throat again, and pushed the coverlet away. Another breath, and he got his feet over the side. Two more, and he could sit up. Darkness swam behind his eyes, and for a long moment he thought his body had erupted in flame. He closed his eyes, tried to regain some control over his breathing, then recalled what his masters at War-Hold had taught him long ago, information which Merryn had drilled into him endlessly in later days: that pain was not truly real, and could, at need, be ignored.
The deepest breath yet, while he tried to think on something else entirely, and he managed to half lunge, half fall across the space between the bed and the window, so that his fingers found the hard, cold stone of the sill.
He faced west.
The sun was all but gone now, but he could see the mountains that masked it: a saw-toothed bite from the horizon. He’d been among those mountains not that long ago: a simple goldsmith, newly married, happily engaged in crafting a war helm for the King, while working in the mines one-quarter of the time.
Where he’d found the gem that now thumped heavily against his chest. Opal but not opal; ruby, yet not that, either. Red, but with a sparking heart like crystal fire.
He reached for it, but that upset his balance, and he had to slap both hands back on the sill. It was darkening out there as he watched: the last of the sunlight being sucked down by the endless shots of snow that lay between him and the forests. Forests that themselves covered half the distance between here and where he’d so recently been. Shots he’d traversed by a means no one should’ve been able to effect.
Unless they had access to what he had little choice but to call magic.
The magic of this gem.
The weight of that knowledge caught him unaware and made him gasp. For a moment he wished he’d died in truth, so that he would no longer have to bear this terrible burden of responsibility. He closed his eyes—to conjure darkness or escape it, he had no idea. No, he told himself, firmly. He had two things yet to accomplish, then he could rest. A day, at most. Half that if he pushed himself to the limit. In fact, he realized, he could probably do one of those things right here.
If he was strong enough—and had appropriate gear.
A quick look-round showed nothing obviously useful, and he knew he hadn’t the strength for a search. It wouldn’t take much. A cut in his hand: merely enough to draw blood—maybe not even that, were it not for the distance involved.
He saw nothing. But then sense caught up with desire, and he recalled that his gear was still in the room. He slid down the wall, then crawled on all fours across the thick sheepskin throw rug to where his snow breeches lay clumped before the fire. Myx, reasonably enough, had undressed him in haste, and spared no time for niceties, so that Avall’s belt was still attached to his breeches, and his knife to the belt. He found it, worked it free, and lay there panting, listening for Myx’s return, mustering strength for that final trek to his bed.
This close to the fire, its heat beat at him in waves, pain and pleasure so mingled he couldn’t distinguish them. He suppressed an urge to crawl right into the fire itself, and complete the thawing of his body, mind, and soul that way.
Or maybe the gem could do that.
Back to bed then? Or should he simply remain here, since whatever he
did would be obvious. Here seemed as good a place as any, and was better use of time in the bargain. And with that, he found the knife and dragged the edge clumsily along his palm just enough to bring forth blood, then clasped his hand upon the gem.
Warmth lapped at him, stronger but less fierce than the fire, and it was as though he were being filled with … himself, it almost seemed: some vital component of his being that had dispersed and now returned. He felt stronger at once, and more energized. His breathing slowed and steadied, and his heart lapsed into a less frantic pace. Calm came with it. He closed his eyes tighter, and … wished.
Wished to see Strynn, to tell her he was all right. Wished to see Rann and tell him the same. And Merryn. He was inside himself and then he wasn’t, and that frightened him beyond reason. But then logic made him recall something he should have thought of earlier. And in that final moment before panic made him return to himself, he pictured another face in his mind. Eellon, who was very close by indeed. And who was kin. And with whom he was linked by affection as well as blood.
Almost he had it. Eellon’s face swam before his inner eye. But Eellon was engaged in dinner, and wasn’t paying attention to what disparate thoughts might come prying at his mind. And so he missed Avall’s frantic plea.
And then panic caught him again, and sent him roaring back into himself. He had only sense enough to free his hand from the gem before darkness found him in truth.
(TIR-ERON—ARGEN-HALL)
“… nor is it to be assumed that a finite number of integers exist, yet an infinite number can be part of a greater infinity. For instance, when a man walks to his door, he faces an infinite number of futures. Go right, or left, or straight ahead, at any of a thousand angles, each of these also offers an infinite number of possible choices, yet each choice diminishes the number of ways his life may fall—yet there are still an infinite number. Frinol syn Meekon has this to say about …”
Lykkon syn Argen-a jerked his head up with a start, gazing blearily at the book propped on the desk before him. Wine cooled to his right in a cup Avall had made him for his last birthday—his nineteenth. A plate of meat morsels sat to the left, mingled with small loaves and various dipping sauces. It was all he had time for now, amid this mass of scholarship.