The Sunset Lands Beyond (The Complete Series, Books 1-3): An epic portal fantasy boxed set

by Sarah Ashwood

  After that, I had to watch him leave, helpless to conjure up an excuse that would get him to stay. He knew I wanted him there, but he’d chosen to go anyway, leaving me truly on my own for what felt like the hardest trial I’d had to face yet. Pushing down a surge of resentment, I returned my focus to the immobile form on the bed and Elisia weeping soundlessly into his hair.

  Powers of Good, be with me now, I entreated silently.

  Placing my hands tentatively over the gaping wound, I closed my eyes, struggling to concentrate while plunging deep within for anything that might help. A gasping breath, a choking gargle distracted me. To my dismay, I realized Garett was breathing his last, the death rattles starting.

  “My lady, he is dying! You must do something!”

  I refused to open my eyes at Elisia’s desperate cries but gritted my teeth and fought harder to shut out the world around me. Aureeyah had never given me lessons in healing. Maybe it’d been too far beyond the scope of my capabilities at the time, but right now I wanted to curse her for it. This was no ordinary feat of magic but something far different and far more complicated. I probed the depths of my innermost being, flinging about desperately for something, anything…

  A shudder rippled through my body, forceful enough to rock me to the side as I touched something new inside. I felt…life and at that instant realized I’d somehow tapped into a life-force. My own.

  It was a desperate attempt, a last-ditch effort, a shot in the dark, but I tried it anyway, despite instinctively knowing its danger. Telling myself I had no other option, I acted. Plunging my hands deep into the wound, I opened myself up completely. I felt power racing through my fingertips, power that flowed out of my body and into the Ranetron’s.

  Instantly, I knew something was wrong. Using my magic before had always felt exhilarating, empowering. This was brutal. This was agony. I’d never felt such intense, draining pain. I heard my own screams as if from a distance, but, defying the pain, I held on until I felt the man under my hands jerk wildly. In spite of the suffering, relief washed over me. I knew his life was returning to him.

  As the wound closed in on itself, my hands slowly withdrew themselves from his body. A final brilliant burst of agony, and they were completely free. The wound had closed without a scar. I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to shut off that flow of power, of life. But it was already too late. I felt consciousness slip, heard Elisia cry out as my body pitched forward. The darkness closed in, and I swayed like a drunk, only to collapse, toppling across the insensible form of the Ranetron High-Chief, every bit as lost as he.

  Sacrifice

  The first stirrings of consciousness arrived slowly. I struggled to wake, feeling as if I waded through quicksand. I had an overwhelming headache, one that seemed to branch out into my limbs, making it more like a full-blown body ache. Groaning, I forced my eyelids open in spite of the painful, overwhelming brightness all around.

  “My lady?”

  The voice was concerned, questioning. I struggled to bring my gaze into to focus so I could determine the speaker. A face loomed above me—a face with alien, pitch-black eyes. Ilgard?

  No, can’t be him.

  The voice was wrong, and the face was younger, somehow.

  “My lady? Can you hear me?”

  I squinted, shaking my head to clear my fuzzy brain. “Cole?” The word came out scratchy and rough. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Cole, is that you?”

  The impassive features above me relaxed a little. “Aye, my lady,” he agreed, relief in his voice. “You awaken.”

  I tried to smile, but it required too much effort. Instead, I whispered, “Where am I?”

  “In your palace chambers.”

  “Wh-what happened? I remember—I remember passing out, but I don’t remember anything else. It feels like I’ve been asleep for decades.”

  Since nobody in Aerisia would’ve known the name Rip Van Winkle, I didn’t drop it, but I swear, the way I felt right then, I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover my hair had turned white and twenty years had vanished while I slept. I couldn’t believe how heavy and weighted my limbs felt. Under the blankets, I was wriggling my toes and turning my ankles, simply to make sure they still worked.

  I guessed my nap hadn’t quite matched Rip’s, though. After handing me a glass of water off the nearby nightstand, Cole replied slowly, “Not decades, but you have slept five days. This is the morning of the sixth.”

  “Five days solid? Really?” I pushed myself up on my elbows, mindful not to spill the cup. “What on earth happened to make me go out like that?”

  “Easy, my lady. Your strength has yet to be restored.”

  Relaxing back against the pillows, I took a drink, more to satisfy him than my own thirst, and then handed him the glass. “But why did I sleep five days? Was I sick?”

  He permitted a slight frown. “You do not remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “The Ranetron High-Chief…the healing…”

  “I remember that, Cole,” I declared impatiently. “But what’s that got to do with this?”

  He eyed me gravely. “In restoring Lord Garett, you nearly took your own life.”

  At his somber statement, new memories suddenly washed over me. Memories I’d blanked out until now. Terrible memories of searing, draining, horrific pain. Memories of my life leaving me and spilling into Garett.

  My life…

  I draped an arm across my eyes. “I remember now. I must’ve done the healing wrong.”

  “To say the least.”

  Lifting my arm, I shot him a mock glare. “You didn’t have to agree.”

  He quirked a half-smile. “You did not have to say it.”

  “Oh brother.” Collapsing once more against the pillows, I replaced my arm, shielding my eyes from the brightness of the room, which was doing nothing to help my headache. “At least once, you’d think you Simathe could sugarcoat the truth a little. You don’t have to be so blunt all the time, y’know.”

  “Should I dissemble then?”

  Before I could respond with, “That might be nice for a change,” seriousness replaced his humor as he said, “I cannot say you did not err. Nevertheless, I will confess your act showed great courage. You are no woman to surrender easily.”

  Slowly, I lowered my arm so I could see his face. “Wow, that’s quite a compliment, coming from a Simathe. Thank you, Cole. That means a lot to me. It really does.”

  Another smile softened his face. “You have earned your praise, and your rest.”

  With that, he stood as if he was going to leave.

  “Wait,” I forestalled him, “how is Garett, anyway? Recovering okay?”

  “Weary, but well. Resting, as you should be.”

  “What about Elisia? And where’s Ilgard, by the way? I wanted to ask him what Council’s going to do now that Lord Elgrend’s gone.”

  “The High-Chief is…in his chambers,” he replied slowly.

  Was I mistaken, or did he sound almost reluctant to hand out this information?

  “So can you get him for me?”

  “Forgive me, I cannot.”

  “What do you mean, ‘forgive me, I cannot’? Cole, what’s going on?” I demanded suspiciously. “There’s something you’re not telling me, and I want to know what it is.”

  Once more, I detected hesitation. However, he finally answered, “The High-Chief rests, my lady. He would not be drawn from your bedside, despite—well,” he pressed on quickly, as if I wouldn’t have noticed the skip, “the Lady Braisley intervened at last, sending him away to rest.”

  “Braisley? Who’s that?”

  I had to admit, I felt a bit jealous of this unknown woman who had enough influence over the Simathe High-Chief to get him to do anything. I’d been Joined to him for months, and I certainly didn’t have that kind of hold over him.

  “And what do you mean, he wouldn’t leave my bedside, despite—despite what? Why does he need to rest, anyhow? I know you g
uys don’t have to like other people do, so what happened to him to make this Braisley person send him away?”

  Luckily for Cole, a knock sounded at the door, saving him from my interrogation. Without waiting for a response, whoever was outside opened the door just enough to enter then turned and closed the door.

  Was my vision playing tricks on me? Was it the headache? Or was my visitor really white and shimmering? For an instant, the powerful glow reminded me of sunbeams striking early morning fog lying low over the lake. I blinked my eyes to dispel the haze, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Aureeyah?”

  The figure spun gracefully at my call, and I saw at a glance it wasn’t Aureeyah after all but another fairy, equally entrancing. Cole stood in respect as she glided across the marble floor, positioning herself at the foot of my bed.

  “Greetings, lady from Earth,” she said, folding her hands at the waist, gazing down solemnly upon me.

  “Uh…”

  Maybe I was still stupefied from my long nap, or maybe it was how the power in me sensed the power in her like a tangible thing. Either way, I was so overwhelmed by her presence I could hardly think at first, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring. She was stunning, mesmerizing, in a way even my friend Aureeyah couldn’t match. Whereas Aureeyah was like forest shade on a summer day, this fairy was the arresting, impassible, snowcapped peaks of a wild mountain range.

  Her sleek, silvery-white gown stopped shy of her bare feet in the front but trailed more than a yard behind her in the back. A gossamer veil, delicate and sheer as a bride’s, draped from an ornate tiara that looked carved from ice. That seemed impossible, but if there was one thing I’d learned so far in Aerisia, it was that the impossible was very often possible, meaning I didn’t rule out an ice crown for this woman. Her golden hair, heavily streaked with scarlet, was pulled over one shoulder but reached her waist even so, and embedded in her forehead was a six-sided snowflake that glimmered brilliantly.

  The set of her face was sharper, perhaps, than Aureeyah’s and her skin even paler, which made her green eyes startlingly bright in contrast to the white of her clothing and pale blonde of her hair. Her aura gave her an almost ghostly appearance, yet from her back fluttered a pair of wings, long and diaphanous and almost as tall as she. Clearly, she was no phantasm but a storybook fairy brought to life—one whose icy beauty was alluring and startling all at once.

  “You’ve awakened,” she observed, her voice a low, pleasant alto. “That is well.” She stepped delicately from the bed’s foot to its head, placing a cool palm on my forehead as if checking for fever. “We feared for your life, Hannah Winters from Earth.”

  I blinked, surprised. “You know my name.”

  “I know a great deal about you, including most all that has befallen you since your arrival in Aerisia,” she corrected.

  “Who are you?”

  The fairy didn’t reply right away, her face grave even though her eyes smiled. She was studying me like I was studying her, I realized. Maybe I was every bit as foreign to her as she was to me. Maybe she’d been awaiting the Artan for many years and was now looking me over, wondering if I was really it. Did I measure up? Could I ever measure up to all that was expected of me?

  “I am one called Braisley,” she explained at last. “My home is Cleyton, the highest peak of the Unpassed Mountains.”

  “You’re the mountain fairy?”

  “Not the mountain fairy, for I am but one of many. I reside at Cleyton, for from its icy breath was I born, and I am part and parcel to its strength.”

  “She is strongest of all fairies,” Cole put in quietly.

  Uh-huh. You’re obviously acquainted with her, and I’m guessing she was undoubtedly in the Unpassed Mountains the whole time I was there. Nobody ever bothered to let me know that, though, did they?

  I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised, since the Simathe had apparently pulled the same trick with the Tearkin giants, but it still rankled. How many other secrets and surprises were they holding onto?

  “Aye, so I am,” the fairy concurred lightly, moving to take a seat on the edge of my bed.

  “Aureeyah never mentioned you,” I said. “Actually, neither did anybody else.”

  I shot Cole a scowl. He shrugged in return, a gesture that could’ve meant the matter was out of his hands or else, Deal with it. Or both. Likely both.

  “My name is seldom heard,” the fairy replied, and I switched my attention back to her. “Many and long have been the years since I last descended to walk among mankind. Were the need not so great, I would not have done so now.”

  “What need?” I frowned.

  “You truly do not know?”

  I shook my head against the pillows. “No.”

  “Why, the need was for you, Hannah—for your life. To save it. Without myself, without the Simathe High-Chief, you surely would have died.”

  My legs were so stiff as I made the solitary journey from my room to Ilgard’s that I felt like one of those old ladies shuffling along the halls of a nursing home in their bathrobe and slippers. I’d always felt sorry for them when, as a kid, I’d go with my family to visit my grandmother, and I felt even more sympathy now.

  After five days in bed, I could pretty much use a cane or walker, I thought wryly. Boy, wouldn’t it be inspiring for folks to see their Artan getting around like that?

  Truthfully, I probably didn’t look very inspiring right now anyway, but I was determined to make this particular visit alone and had turned down Cole’s offer of help.

  Besides, I figured, the exercise has to be good for me after so much time in bed. In fact, I should go visit Garett when this is done; keep moving and stay on my feet.

  If I still had the strength, that is. Braisley had warned me I might suffer bouts of weakness for the next several days. My body had undergone severe strain during the Ranetron’s healing and my own. Time would be needed for it to recover satisfactorily. How much time, she hadn’t said, but with how weak I felt, I was afraid it might be awhile.

  The going was slow enough that I was beginning to think I should’ve taken Cole up on his offer after all, but eventually I reached my destination, after stopping twice in the hallway for a brief rest. I didn’t bother to knock but entered silently, closing the door after myself and leaning against it to catch my breath and gain my bearings.

  The first thing I saw was the Simathe Chief Captain, seated behind a desk near the window, going through a stack of paperwork and scratching on parchment with a quill pen. Upon my entrance, he glanced up, stabbing the pen in the inkwell as he pushed his chair back from the desk. Rising, he strode over to me, saying firmly, “This is not a good time, my lady. Both of you should rest. Come, I’ll escort you to your chambers.”

  Shaking my head, I whispered, “No. No, Norband, I have to see him. I need to see if he’s okay—just have to…”

  My gaze fell on the man on the bed, and I couldn’t go on. Silence stretched. At last, Norband said, “Very well, my lady. I’ll allow a moment. Do not disturb him, however.”

  I nodded in agreement, not quite trusting myself to speak. Accepting the gesture, the Chief Captain went out, leaving me alone with the sleeping man on the bed. I looked back when I heard the door close, half afraid of being in here by myself and half making sure he was really gone and Ilgard and I were really alone.

  We were, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how I felt about that. Or any of this, for that matter. Inside was a mixed-up, bubbling concoction of emotions ranging from disbelief to gratitude, attraction to awkwardness, and everything in between. This was possibly the most delicate position we’d been in yet, the High-Chief and I, and I honestly didn’t know how to respond. When I looked over at him, though, it was clear he was out, and that gave me the courage to steal closer.

  At his bedside, I stood gazing down at him for a time, simply watching him sleep, and felt my heart turn over. I’d never seen him like this—off guard, asleep, as vulnerable as I suppo
sed he could be. Beneath its bronze cast, his face was unnaturally pale, the eerie blackness of his unbound hair accentuating that pallor and the fact that he was not himself.

  I felt a stab of guilt.

  My fault, all of this.

  Sinking onto the floor beside the bed, clutching it with all ten fingers, I debated what to do. Selfishly, I wanted to wake him up, to hear him speak and reassure me everything was going to be okay. On the other hand, I’d promised Norband, and I didn’t think he would appreciate me breaking my word. The temptation was there, though. I even thought if I simply willed it hard enough, maybe he’d wake up on his own, leaving me innocent of all charges.

  Then I asked myself why I was being such a baby about this. Deep down, I think the answer was that I was afraid. What if his condition was more serious than Braisley, Cole, and even Norband were letting on? What if I’d done something to permanently scar or alter him? What if, when he woke up from this, he was never the same?

  That’s stupid, the more rational part of my brain interjected. You’re the same, aren’t you?

  I didn’t know. Was I? Or had that moment in the corridor, that moment of weakness or passion or whatever it had been, changed everything, including me? It must have changed something, or else I wouldn’t be in here. I wouldn’t be afraid like this. Afraid that everything would’ve changed; afraid that nothing had changed.

  “Oh Ilgard,” I whispered, laying trembling fingers on the bed next to his bare arm. “What have I done? What have we done? And what on earth are we going to do about it?”

  When Norband found me a short while later, I was up off my knees and in a chair beside Ilgard’s bed. I had more dignity at least than to be caught weeping over the Simathe High-Chief. And I wasn’t weeping—not really, although I did scrub the traces of a couple tears off my cheeks as the Chief Captain entered the room. He inquired quietly if I were ready to return to my room, and I said I was. I felt spent, emotionally and physically, and even accepted the Simathe’s arm and his silent aid on the return journey.