Lorraii most definitely had reason to be concerned by such a revelation. How had she gotten that far into the mountains if it wasn’t by her own two feet, which had stumbled uncertainly enough before she’d collapsed in front of his party? Kherron understood the ways of otherworldly travel—the doorway the Roaming People had used and which he himself had conjured to escape the pursuit of Paden’s men; the river that had snatched him from the currents of the Sylthurst before its waters dragged the Honalei and Uishen with it into its depths. But these things he understood. He’d come to recognize them as part of what he could do as a Blood of the Veil and as tools and aid at his disposal, should he need them. He highly doubted Lorraii knew how to wield the doorway—or that the spirits of the natural world who had brought him into being before he was born had been remotely compelled to deliver her to him.
So many unexplained things had opened since he’d set out from Hephorai, and so many more yet revealed themselves the longer he journeyed east. No doubt whatever had caused that great, rippling fracture in the world felt by everyone he’d spoken with since had broken more natural laws than he could ever discover. Perhaps that demanded a bit more caution on their part moving forward, but he could not let it stop them. As far as Kayu had said, they were half a dozen days from the edge of the Bladeshale Mountains at best and perhaps only a few more from the Amneas itself, depending on the route the Nateru chose for them. In the scheme of everything he’d endured, that was unfathomably close.
THAT NIGHT, BENEATH the cover of the snow-laden trees and beside the fire that had so willingly appeared at his request, Kherron found it more difficult than normal to fall sleep. He rolled onto his back in the thick woolen cloak, finding only a handful of stars peeking down at him through the thick branches. They really were quite close to the end—or at least one end to one of his many journeys. He only hoped that when they got there, he’d have it in him to do for Dehlyn what had to be done and that the cost of such a final turn would not be something he could not pay, even for those he knew depended on such an instance coming to its own completion. Even for Aelis.
Almost as if she’d heard his thoughts—or perhaps she could smell them—the crunch of snow under heavy paws joined the crackle of the fire. A few seconds after that, Kherron felt the warm weight of her breath as she pressed her snout gently against the top of his head. He pushed himself up into sitting and turned to look at her. The firelight wavered across her thick sable fur and danced within the dark, intelligent eyes so close to his own. She hadn’t come to him like this once since they’d left the disrupted clanning, and he couldn’t imagine what had prompted her to do so now. But he was wholly grateful for it.
Slowly, he lifted a hand to bury it in the thick, coarse fur just below her ear. “We’re almost there,” he said, speaking quietly enough that if Lorraii were actually asleep so many yards away on the other side of the fire, she would not hear him at all. “Then this will all be over. I promise.”
Aelis’ bear let out another heavy breath, then moved past him. He thought she meant to disappear again into the trees, but instead, she turned around on the packed snow and headed back toward him. Then she lowered herself to the ground behind him so her head rested just beside his hand. Smiling, Kherron pressed his fingers into the fur atop her head and leaned back against the massive bear’s shoulder, warmer and more comforting than any fire he’d stoked or summoned on his own.
Chapter 24
Ten days. Torrahs couldn’t believe it. For ten days, the woman-child Dehlyn had remained as she was—terrified, compliant, irritatingly naïve—and he had seen nothing of the green-eyed amarach vessel within her or her grey-winged guardian.
He did not know what this meant, and it both thrilled and unnerved him. Such laws, he’d come to assume, could not be broken until the very end, but he was wrong. The cycle of Dehlyn’s transformation and swift departure from this world with her amarach guardian, which had continued every night without fail in the two years she’d spent with Torrahs and every night before that for centuries, had paused. Perhaps it had even ceased altogether; he could not know. He would have been quite content to call this a small victory among very few if it were not for the surprising repercussions.
His latest work in the tower and the undoing of his bonded amarach had to be the cause of such sudden and unexplained changes; nothing else made sense. At first, it was a minor nuisance, revealing itself to him first in the flames. He’d meant only to relight the fire in the main hall, but when he called the flame, as he had countless times since he’d mastered the summoning of it, nothing happened. This had jolted him with frustration, like pulling open a door only to find it locked and unmoved, and he tried again. Four more times he repeated the conjuration, and on the last, the flames had finally appeared, though not where he’d meant them to be. A huge, unruly, swirling column of fire and scorching heat burst into existence within the very air itself between Torrahs and the hearth, momentarily stunning him with its impossibility. The hem of his grey robes singed, but he managed to push the fire back into the hearth where it belonged, and eventually, it settled into his rightful place.
Of course, that thrumming, electrifying thickness in the air—in every particle comprising Deeprock Spire and their existence here—remained just as powerful now as it had been after their last intensified session in the tower, if not more. At the time, he’d thought this odd response of the flames to his calling was merely a ripple of that power and whatever change they’d succeeded in making with the amarach vanquished. Now, he was not as certain.
Twice now, his staff had leapt from his hands without cause. Doors locked and unlocked themselves throughout the fortress, seemingly at random and never as he’d left them. Three days ago, he’d taken a short walk along the shoreline—just enough to reinvigorate himself with the crisp air after so much time within the stale confines of stone walls. Without warning, he’d stepped into some pocket of stillness there upon the cliffs slick with chilled salt water. The Amneas had raged before him, waves rocking and crashing violently upon the rocky shore and sending plumes of spray high into the air. The wind had been whipping at his hair and beard, pressing his robes against him as he walked, and then there was nothing. No wind. No ocean spray. No sound. He saw the world moving around him as it was, but where he stood, none of it entered. A gull flew overhead, wheeling in the force of the sea’s winds. When it glided directly above him, the thing shuddered and plummeted to the earth. Torrahs had stepped back just in time for the white and grey bird to land at his feet, and not even the sickening thump of it sounded upon impact. Then he found himself unable to breathe, as if the air outside that should have refreshed him had now all been drawn away, leaving him gasping soundlessly within the stillness.
Fortunately, he’d had the presence of mind to turn around and head back to the stone fortress. Only a few swift steps had removed him safely from that strange cavity in the natural world, so very much like what he’d experienced of the Ebbing Realm that he found himself almost running back toward the Spire’s main doors. Though he did not intend in any way to search for that unnerving presence—or lack thereof—again, he had a strong feeling he would not find it a second time in the same place. It concerned him just as much that he could not predict where next it might appear.
These things were unexpected and a little worrisome in and of themselves, to say the least, but combined with what they’d done in the tower and the fact that the vessel had not revealed herself in ten days, these instances had planted a seed of doubt and unrest within Torrahs that he could not uproot. And he felt it growing.
He’d heard nothing from the Roaming People, received no dreams or visions, and now he had no way to know where Kherron was now or how close the lad had come in the last few days to end this odd stalemate when he fulfilled his preordained role. The amarach vessel had told him as much—that Kherron was still on his way—and the expectation of this final element was enough to maintain Torrahs’ patience, little though it was
. Something had changed, and while Torrahs did not know the details, he felt the final age of this world as he knew it drawing nearer with every breath, like a massive wave about to crest.
For the first time in his life, he did not know what to do to bide his time or how to seal the cracks in his certainty. For the first time in his long journey toward this end, he thought perhaps there were things he had not and could not anticipate within the coming of this final stage.
Chapter 25
The wind fluttered through the gossamer curtains, pulling them back and forth like a low tide lapping at the wet sand of the ocean’s shores. The sunrise was brilliant from this height within the tallest tower in Hephorai, the city of thinkers and philosophers. Zerod Ophad realized the amarach standing beside him had most definitely seen greater sights than this in her ancient, immortal lifetime, but he thought she looked rather fond of it all the same. As was he.
He placed a wizened hand upon the warm flesh of Mirahl’s back, just between the outward curve of her tawny wings folded so gently against her form. “Are you certain you wish to go?” he asked, not daring to look away from the glistening hues of pink, orange, and purple bursting across the eastern horizon; if he did, he thought he might break and beg her to change her mind. He knew she would not.
“The only thing to which I’ve ever been more powerfully drawn was you.” Her words flowed out of her like thick amber honey, blending sweetly with the sun’s fading warmth not yet entirely gone. Then Mirahl turned her head to gaze at the old man who had been her lover and her companion for so many decades of his life. Zerod could not help but meet her violet gaze in turn. “I cannot tell you what will happen,” she said, her loving smile tinged with inevitable sadness. “I only know that things will change. Everything may be different, or perhaps far less than I imagine.”
Zerod smiled and took her hand in his, gently passing his fingertips back and forth across her soft skin. “I never expected otherwise.”
Her other hand joined their shared grasp, and her eyes shimmered with tears no celestial being could ever shed. “The way is open again,” she said. “Not entirely, but enough for me to pass through. Even wider now than when Kherron was here, and that was... well, I managed it.”
The old man’s brows drew together, though he’d long since abandoned any attempts to reproach her for decisions he thought too perilous for her well-being. Mirahl had pushed herself through this sliver of an opening she’d mentioned, risking the essence of her own existence just to bring the amarach vessel here, to their home, to prove to Kherron the point she’d wished to make. The act had nearly destroyed her in the process, the Aetherius having turned on her with their own immortal weapons for daring to further bend the laws so long unchanged and so recently altered—the laws that had, since the day they’d bonded to each other, forbidden her from returning to what she called the Reach and stripped her from her communion with the Light. Three days ago, that communion had bloomed again, and Mirahl had told him the time had come. Kherron was upon the Amneas Sea, a mere few days from Deeprock Spire’s doorstep. And together, they had prepared for what Mirahl had always known would come and Zerod had wished might happen while he still lived.
“You do not have to come,” she said, studying his face. “It will be safer for you here—”
“I will not let you go alone.” The sternness in his voice surprised him, but Mirahl only responded with a flickering lift of her brow. “I am yours as much as you have been mine. And whatever happens after this, I have spent a longer lifetime with you than I probably deserve.”
A resigning laugh spilled from her lips, and she tilted her head. “I’d spend a thousand lifetimes with you if it were within my power.” Mirahl removed her hands slowly from his and placed them on either side of his face.
The subtle strength within her hands filled him with the purity of peace and enduring love he’d always felt in her presence. If he had but one regret in his long life, it was that he had not found her sooner. She leaned toward him and pressed her lips to his, breathing into his very being with everything she was—everything they’d grown to be together.
“If I cannot change your mind, my love,” she whispered, pulling back just enough to brush the words against his face, “it is time.” When Zerod nodded, she released him and took his hand. Together, they turned once more to face the balcony and the striking brilliance of the sunrise, and Mirahl accepted the Light for them both.
For a moment, Zerod thought something had gone wrong; he could not see. It took a few seconds for his vision to clear, adjusting to the dark, cold stone all around him in such contrast to the open air of his home and the dawning light of day. While he did not consider himself completely senile, he did admittedly understand the decay of his senses that inevitably came with old age. But he was not finished yet.
Mirahl gave his hand one last gentle squeeze, then released it. The men sitting at the long, low table in front of a roaring hearth all turned to look at the newcomers within their fortress.
Zerod scanned their faces, passing over the withered, fattened, bald versions of the Brothers he’d known so very well, decades ago in their youth. He recognized each one of them in mere seconds and picked out the very thing it was that made them now seem so unlike themselves. Fortenu’s large amount of extra weight; the guilt behind Ambrous’ eyes; Vos’ baldness; the red splotches rising eternally on Nicholai’s wrinkled cheeks. And the only thing that had changed about Torrahs, when Zerod saw him, was that his hair had greyed completely.
With a shout of surprise, Torrahs stood abruptly from the table. None of the other Brothers moved at all to do the same. The Wanderer held Zerod’s gaze with his piercing blue eyes, then the man removed himself from the bench at the table and made his way toward his visitor. The man’s boots thumped harshly against the stone floors, even over their layers of caked-on dust, but Zerod saw right through Torrahs’ bravado of intimidation—as he always had.
Once they stood but a mere foot apart, Torrahs let out a barking laugh and lunged forward to wrap his arms around the one man he’d wished to join him here and the one man who had refused to follow in his path. Zerod knew these things, because they’d spoken of them, and the fact that he’d come here now to Deeprock Spire with Mirahl did nothing to change the force and the depth of what he believed. Despite this, four years had been a long time without any word from the man who had been his dearest friend; Zerod returned the embrace and found himself chuckling at such an odd reception.
The rest of the Brotherhood seemed to realize this visit was not a threat but an unexpected celebration—at least, that it was intended to begin that way—and their voices rose in surprise, amusement, joy. Zerod could not quite understand how these men could seclude themselves within these walls, doing what they did and knowing what quickly approached, and still act as if the burden of their own consciences did not exist. Perhaps they no longer did. Even so, when Torrahs released their embrace and took a step back, the ex-Brother from Hephorai glanced again at the age-battered bodies of those once his friends and smiled at them. The only one who seemed not wholly at peace was Ambrous. He took note of that.
“What are you doing here, Zerod?” Torrahs asked, grinning wildly and pulling at his long grey beard. The blue and purple beads strung through it popped through his fingers and clacked against each other.
“I’ve come to see you, of course.” Zerod did not have to work too hard to retain his knowing smile—only a little. “And to talk, if we may. It’s been far too long.”
“It most definitely has.” The Wanderer eyed his visitor up and down for a moment, then returned to the long table only to retrieve the wooden staff he’d carried for almost as long as they’d been friends. Then he finally seemed to acknowledge the new amarach standing behind Zerod, and his smile faltered only somewhat. “Bring your amarach, if you wish.”
“My name is Mirahl.” For the first time in longer than any of these men’s memories extended, an amarach voice echoed within t
he stone walls of Deeprock Spire’s main hall—an amarach who had not been bonded with the intention of control, command, and personal gain. It seemed to Zerod that the Brotherhood had forgotten the true purpose of the bonding, though perhaps it had already been so tainted before their time, they merely believed in the abomination it had become. “I will remain here,” she added.
Torrahs’ eyes grew wide as he stared at the immortal, then he blinked and shot Zerod a glance of surprised confusion and not a little disappointment. But he did not push the matter. Instead, he set the end of his staff upon the stone floor with a click. “Well, then, Zerod. Let us talk. This way.”
Zerod expected his hand to tremble when he reached behind himself toward Mirahl without turning to look at her. She took his hand, and this time, he squeezed her fingers with what felt like the last of his strength. He hadn’t known he’d been asking for reassurance and fortitude by such a gesture until that was exactly what he received by her touch. Then he released her and stepped down the wide hall with Torrahs.
He had not thought to bring his cane with him, which seemed all the more amusing for how diligently prepared he’d been throughout his life for so many things. Torrahs gave Zerod’s limp an appraising glance from the corner of his eye, then offered Zerod his staff. The man from Hephorai took it, grateful for the aid and entirely too aware of what was to come for such an oversight on his part to cause him any embarrassing discomfort. What was one more limp among similarly declining old men?
Torrahs led him through the bare, silent halls of this ancient and desolate fortress, and when they stopped at a large door for which the Wanderer produced a heavy iron key, Zerod finally felt he possessed the composure to do what he had come here to do. At least this way, they would not have an audience; he suspected Torrahs had brought him here for very much the same reason.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 25