Aiden and the others were waiting when the hunters came down the steps.
“What happened?” Aiden asked.
Elinor registered who did not return and gasped. Polly took her hand and gave it a squeeze, with a look of grim determination.
“You were right about where the monsters were. Higani. They weren’t the problem,” Calfon said. He recounted what happened after the fight, as Corran sank down into a chair in the kitchen and Ross moved to pour him a slug of whiskey.
“You didn’t actually see it happen, right?” Elinor challenged. She had gone pale, worry clear in her eyes. “So you can’t be sure. We’ve never heard of someone getting pulled into one of those Rifts.”
“We know that people have been going missing more often now,” Calfon replied gently. “Some of that is surely the monsters and the guards. But maybe there’s more to it than we thought.”
“No,” Elinor protested, the tears now streaming down her face. Polly took the whiskey bottle from Ross, poured some into a glass for Elinor, and took a liberal swig from the bottle herself.
“Drink this,” Polly said, forcing the glass into Elinor’s hand. “Come sit down. We’ll figure something out.”
Aiden and the others joined them, pulling up chairs around the table. Calfon helped Polly lay out a cold dinner of bread, sausage, cheese, dried fruit, and honey. Calfon brought the partly-empty whiskey bottle to the table, and Polly dug another out from the cabinet, setting it down with a thunk.
“Seems like that kind of night,” she said, taking a chair beside Elinor.
“Go over it again,” Aiden said. “I need to know everything, no matter how unimportant. If they did get pulled through a Rift, then we’ve got a lot of work ahead. We know one way for sure to open it back up—blood magic.”
“Don’t we become the thing we’re fighting, if you do that?” Ross asked.
“I’ve always been taught that intent matters,” Aiden replied. “We became killers to stop Machison and his witch—and the guards—that were controlling the monsters. Killers, soldiers—but not murderers. The intent behind the act makes the difference. I’ll see what I can learn of blood magic.” He looked to Corran and Elinor. “We’ll bring them home.”
Corran sat at the table for the next few candlemarks, doing his best to keep his mind on the conversation. Aiden and Elinor brought out old manuscripts and histories, and they all helped search for any mention of Rifts and the Balance. He lost count of how many times his friends refilled his glass of whiskey. He doubted there was enough alcohol in the kingdom to dull the pain of Rigan’s absence and his fear for his brother’s safety.
I’m the older brother; I was supposed to keep Kell and Rigan safe. Mama and Papa would have expected as much. Now Kell’s dead and Rigan’s missing. I’m an outlaw and a fugitive. How did things go so wrong? How did I manage to fail so badly?
At some point, late into the night or early morning, they pushed the old books aside, vowing to regroup once they had some sleep. Corran managed to make it to the room he shared with Rigan unassisted, despite the whiskey. He was drunk, but not nearly enough to forget. Without bothering to remove more than his shoes, Corran fell across his bed, turning his head so he did not have to see the empty cot on the other side of the room.
Unquiet dreams made Corran’s sleep restless. He relived the fight in the warehouse against the monster and soldiers who killed Kell, only to have the scene shift and become the barn where ghouls killed Jora, his betrothed. The images folded in on themselves, and Corran found himself in the cemetery the night he and Rigan buried Kell, standing over a fresh grave, making an offering to the god of vengeance.
“Magic always has a price, and even with my gift, it is possible for you to draw too heavily upon your power and destroy yourself. If that should happen, your soul will not find its way to the Golden Shores, and it will wander the shadowed places for eternity.” Eshtamon said, standing at the foot of Kell’s grave. The Elder God had given them his blessing, named them his champions, and bestowed his favor. But he had also given them both warnings, and it was his caution to Rigan that Corran heard again in his dreams.
Bring him back! We can’t do your bidding if he’s stuck on the other side of a Rift. In his dream, Rigan stood in the distance, able to see him but too far away to hear Corran argue with an ancient god. Rigan’s image wavered and blurred as if it might wink out at any second.
I will do whatever you require of me, but give me back my brother, Corran pleaded, no longer certain what separated dream from reality.
“Your bond will lead him home,” Eshtamon’s voice rang through the darkness, “if you are able to open the door. You have done well in the quest I set out for you, but there is much left to do.”
If you want me to finish the quest, give me back my brother, Corran demanded. I need him to complete what you’ve given us to do. I’m just an undertaker and a hunter. I can’t fix the Balance or close Rifts. Rigan’s your champion mage. You want your quest finished? Give him back to me!
Even in his dream, Corran’s grief over his brother’s absence and fear for Rigan’s safety made him bold enough to defy even an Elder God.
“You have all that you require. Remember what binds you together.” On that cryptic note, Eshtamon’s presence vanished. Corran woke, sweating and shaking.
Was that real, or just my imagination? What type of bond? That we’re brothers? That we swore our souls to him? Why can’t he say what he means?
Corran felt torn between hoping the dream had been an actual communication from Eshtamon, and hoping it was merely his grief and fear taking form. He muttered a curse, pushed his blankets aside, and got up, doubting he would get back to sleep this night. Since he was still in the clothes he had worn all day, Corran took his bedside lantern and padded out to the kitchen, expecting to find it deserted.
Instead, he found Elinor sitting at the table, hunched over a cup of tea, in a room lit only by the banked embers of the fireplace.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked when she startled at his entrance.
“I’m not much company, but sure—have a seat.” Elinor gestured to the chair beside her. Corran grabbed a cup. “Better you than our friend the ghost.”
“Have you seen him lately?”
Elinor shook her head. “No, but he moves the pens around if I leave the desk in the library. Like he’s tidying up after me.”
Corran reached for the teapot. “Do I need to make more?”
She shook her head. “There’s plenty. Have some. It’s a soothing blend, but I’m not sure it can help tonight.”
Corran pulled up a chair and poured himself a cup. He stared into the amber liquid for a long time, content to sit in silence.
“I can’t imagine what this is like for you,” Elinor said after a long pause. “You’ve lost so much recently.”
Corran’s lips twitched into a wan smile. “And you haven’t? We’ve all lost everything—that’s why we’re out here.”
Elinor looked up, eyes puffy and red-rimmed with grief. “We’ve lost our homes and our professions—at least, as far as the Guilds are concerned. Calfon and the others left family behind, but as far as we know, they’re still alive. You and Rigan lost Kell and the shop, your home—that’s a lot.”
Corran ducked his head, not wanting to meet her gaze. “I know Rigan cares about you,” he replied, dodging her observation.
She set a hand on his forearm. “Thank you. I care about him, too. It’s been about the only good thing, you know? I ran away—with Parah’s blessing—when the talk about me being a witch started. And I had nothing to do with what happened, but no one would have believed me. They just wanted someone to burn.”
Corran remembered how upset Rigan had been when he had gone to the pigment and dye shop where Elinor had worked, only to find out she had fled in the night. “I couldn’t believe it when you and Rigan and the hunters turned up at the witch house Below,” Elinor said with a sad smile. “I never thought I’d see any
of you again.”
“You never did say how you and Polly ended up sharing a house down there.”
Elinor chuckled. “We ran away separately. Polly had a bit of trouble at the inn and was afraid someone had seen—she ran away after some men came asking questions and went Below. Then I ran, and I was wandering, still trying to figure out what I was going to do, and spotted a friendly face.”
“Polly’s ‘bit of trouble’—I’m pretty sure we buried the bastard,” Corran said. “Kell told us he’d been paid extra for a curse, but I think he made that up.”
“Thank you.” They looked up to see Polly in the doorway. She had a robe pulled around her nightdress, and her hair was mussed. “I guess I’m not the only one who couldn’t sleep.”
“There’s plenty of tea,” Corran said, pulling out a seat for Polly to join them.
Polly settled into the chair and closed her eyes as she sniffed the tea’s fragrance. Corran thought she looked young and haggard. “I keep thinking that if monsters can get out, Rigan and the others should be able to, also.” She sighed. “Trent and Mir have been especially kind to me—Rigan too, of course—but Trent’s gone out of his way to teach me to use the weapons, and he doesn’t mind being my hunting partner. I don’t want anything to happen to them.”
“Aiden’s not sleeping either,” Elinor said. “His lantern was lit when I came down the hallway—I could see the light under the door.”
Corran debated whether to tell them about his dream and decided against it. He would share the information with Aiden, though he was still unsure whether it was a true vision or merely an overstressed imagination. “If there’s a way to get them home, we’ll find it,” Corran vowed, hoping with all his heart that was true.
“Where’s everyone else?” Elinor asked. “Are they up, too?”
“Calfon’s on watch,” Corran replied. “Ross is sleeping. It’ll be his turn next.”
“You think there are more bounty hunters out there?” Elinor finished her tea in a swallow.
“Pretty sure of it,” he said. “Guards, too. And that damned Jorgeson. We’d have to leave Ravenwood to be completely free, and even then, within the kingdom people talk.”
“We’ve outrun soldiers a couple of times,” Polly volunteered. “Fought off some bounty hunters, too.”
“If there are more monsters, does that mean more blood magic that has to be paid for—more of a Cull needed?” Elinor asked.
“I don’t know. If so, that brings us back to the Balance—and the Rifts,” Corran said, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
When most people in Darkhurst spoke of the Balance, it was in the sense of a cosmic tit-for-tat, good and evil balancing each other out. The reality, Corran and the others had learned, was far less appealing.
“Aiden said he was looking into the old histories to see if anyone knew what was on the other side of a Rift,” Elinor said.
“We didn’t even know there were bloody Rifts until lately,” Polly muttered. “But if they’re where the monsters come from, then they must open and close a lot.”
“The trick is being able to get a message to Rigan and the others so they’ll come to the right opening,” Corran replied. “Otherwise, they could get out of the Rift and find themselves anywhere in the kingdom—or beyond.” He thought of what Eshtamon had said in his dream and stood. “I’m going to check in on Aiden, and then see if I can finally get to sleep.” Corran laid a hand on Elinor’s shoulder. “Don’t stay up all night. That won’t help anyone.”
Corran knocked on the door to the room Aiden had claimed as his library. He heard a tired grunt in response and stepped inside. Aiden sat at a table with books and manuscripts piled around him. His hair was wild, as if he had been running his hands through it, and he had a day’s growth of beard. A glass of whiskey sat beside his books.
“I see you’re still up,” Aiden greeted him.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I.” Aiden rubbed his eyes and stretched, but he looked worn and worried. “It’s slow going,” he added, with a sweep of his hand to indicate the manuscripts. “And I hate small lettering. Damned hard on the eyes.”
“Found anything?”
Aiden shrugged. “Witches don’t like to say things straightforwardly. I guess it’s a carryover from being persecuted—if you speak in code and write in riddles, you can deny what something means, and no one can prove you wrong. Damn them.”
The healer stood and stretched again, yielding a few loud pops from his spine. He took a sip of whiskey and sighed. “I get the feeling that investigating the Balance—and hence, the Rifts—wasn’t a popular or safe field of study. Thank the gods witches are curious by nature and don’t listen well. So there are bits and pieces spread through a lot of books, but not all in one place. I have to follow references one book makes to another and put it together for myself.”
“Do you think they’re still alive?” It hurt Corran to ask, but the question weighed on him to the point where he could barely think clearly.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I haven’t found any references to people going in and coming out again. What’s here stems from people who got a look inside when a Rift opened near them, right before the monsters came through.”
“What did they see?” Corran set aside Aiden’s disclaimer to process later when he had the luxury of falling apart in private.
“That’s where the texts diverge wildly. Some witnesses say the realm inside looked shadowed, with all the colors muted like at twilight. And others say the opposite, that they could see lights and auras and some really strange shit. I don’t know what to believe.” He paced. “I’ve got a theory that the people who saw the muted colors might not have been witches, and the ones who saw auras had magic.”
“Sounds possible.”
“I think I’ve found some hints on how to open a Rift, although it’s complicated magic. I’ve got to study it more, or the results could be really, really bad.” Aiden ran a hand over the stubble on his chin, as if suddenly noticing that he needed a shave. “That might not be the hard part. Other than one legend about a hero making his way through the land of the living, dead, and undead—inside the Rift, by the way, was the land of the undead—there’s no map or description of what’s on the other side. In addition to the monsters, of course. So how do we know that if we open a Rift, Rigan and the others would be anywhere close or know about it beforehand? We don’t want to hold the Rift open long—and it will take enough magic that we couldn’t even if there wasn’t the danger of setting all sorts of monsters loose.”
“I might have an idea about that,” Corran said, still leaning against the wall by the door. “I had a dream tonight,” he blurted, changing his mind about keeping it to himself. “Eshtamon was in it.”
Aiden looked up, fixing him with an intent stare. “Tell me.”
Corran recounted his dream, trying to repeat the words the Elder God had spoken as closely as possible. “So if we could figure out what he meant by our ‘bond,’ maybe we could use that to pull Rigan and the others through.”
Aiden nodded. “Not only that, but if the bond is that strong, it might work as a beacon, calling to Rigan so that he’s in the right place at the right time.” He looked energized, newly animated by the information. Aiden pushed aside the books he had been studying and went to his shelves, plucking new volumes and scrolls and setting them on the table. “I need to look at this more closely. Come back in a few candlemarks. I’ll know more then—I hope.”
Instead of going back to his room—too empty without Rigan—Corran wandered. The hidden, underground floor of the monastery was surprisingly large. He wondered how the monks had used the area, back before they were forced from their homes when the worship of the Elder Gods fell out of favor, and the king seized their lands. Perhaps the hunters weren’t the first fugitives to seek refuge in these secret rooms. The monks left little but their furniture and some books behind, so Corran would never know for sure.
; His mind raced, and while his body ached for rest, Corran knew he would end up tossing and turning if he tried to sleep before exhaustion gave him no alternative. He kept coming back to Eshtamon’s words—and his insistence that the “bond” would bring Rigan home if they could only figure things out.
“There’s the bond of being brothers,” Corran reasoned aloud, since no one else was around. “That’s both blood and emotions, growing up together. We’re close—we’ve had to be, losing Mama and Papa so early.” Corran had seen other families; he knew that many siblings did not get along. He’d always counted it a blessing that he, Rigan, and Kell worked together so well and lived in close quarters with relatively few spats. Sure, we’ve argued. Taken a few swings at each other, too. But some brothers can’t stand each other. At the end of it, we’ve always stuck together.
“We’re both undertakers, of course, since we’re family. But I guess it’s a bond of sorts, what with the Guild and the grave magic,” he continued as he paced.
Magic. We both have grave magic because it comes down through the families of undertakers. But what about Mama’s Wanderer blood? Rigan got her power, and I didn’t, but we share the same mother. The Wanderer woman who found me in the city seemed to be able to tell we had a relation. And what did Rigan tell me the Wanderer he met told him?
“Blood calls to blood.”
Corran raced back to Aiden’s room and found the healer still staring blearily at his manuscripts. “I think I’ve got something,” Corran said excitedly. He recapped what he had been thinking, and as he talked, Aiden grew more focused and alert.
“Eshtamon called us his champions,” Corran said. “We swore our souls to him for vengeance. And the legends say that when Ardevan cursed the Wanderers to be forever reviled and hated, Eshtamon granted them his favor and a measure of protection. So what if the ‘bond’ isn’t just one kind, but bond upon bond? Brother and Wanderer blood and grave magic and hunter—plus the vow to Eshtamon that seems to be larger than life.”
“I think you’re right,” Aiden replied, nodding. “Your vow to an Elder God could transcend life and death—and everything in between. I don’t know why Eshtamon can’t simply pluck them out of wherever they are and bring them back, but maybe there are rules, even for gods.”
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