Thornton
The more they walked, the more that time became a foreign concept to Thornton. He’d always heard of the idea of eternity, but he’d always thought it just a figure of speech—some way to explain waiting a long time or being married to someone. He’d never thought eternity might be an actual thing, yet here, in the Land of the Dead, he wondered if time even existed at all. He wasn’t sure if he had been here for a day, a year, or a lifetime. In fact, if he were somehow transported back to the room in Silus the Healer’s, he was convinced that no time would have passed at all.
It was the same feeling he got in the Otherworld: the sense that these places were somehow beyond time, beyond any sense of the word, just existing in a moment, forever.
The thought, like the scenery, made his head spin. The Traveler must have noticed, because he had stopped walking. He turned around to look at Thornton.
“Don’t worry. We don’t have much farther to go,” the god said.
Thornton answered with a nod.
“Are you feeling alright?”
“My head,” Thornton said with a surprising amount of effort.
“I told you,” the Traveler said with a chuckle. “This place has that effect on the living. Be glad that you’re uncomfortable—it means you’re still mortal.”
Thornton grimaced an acknowledgment. “It doesn’t mean that I have to like it,” he said.
“True,” the Traveler replied. “But should you find yourself lost, you’ll want to remember what it feels like, that feeling.”
“If I get lost?” Thornton asked, puzzled.
“Yes,” the Traveler said, starting off again. “If we get separated somehow.”
Thornton tried to follow but found that his legs didn’t work.
“What do you mean? What could separate us in here?”
The Traveler was silent as he walked on; Thornton didn’t like it one bit.
***
They had passed over deserts, grasslands, jungle, and even a frozen wasteland. Thornton had stopped keeping track of all the different climates they’d gone through and decided instead to focus on something more useful: trying to figure out what he was going to say to Miera when he saw her again.
He knew she would probably be upset with him, going against her wishes like this. After all, it was she who had sealed the Otherworld. Granted, she had done it in an ill-conceived attempt at self-sacrifice, saving herself so that the rest of the world could live; but if what Ynara, the Binder of Worlds, had said was true, then he would just have to deal with Miera being angry with him. He knew in his heart that he was doing the right thing.
But it still didn’t make the prospect of facing an angry Miera any easier.
***
They were trudging now through a desert of some sort, but one whose rolling dunes with snow-capped mountains beyond seemed entirely foreign to Thornton. He wondered which people were responsible for this place. Then it dawned on him: he could probably ask the Traveler. If anyone might know, it would be him.
“Traveler,” Thornton said, catching the god’s attention.
“Yes?” he asked, not breaking stride. The sand made whispered crunching sounds beneath his sandaled feet.
“You said that every spirit in here was responsible for this place’s appearance . . .”
“And you’re wondering who would have made such a place as this?”
“Y-Yes,” Thornton replied.
“My people,” the Traveler answered. Turning his head to look at Thornton, he added, “Those from beyond the Wastes.”
Thornton stopped. He certainly hadn’t expected that answer. “Your people are the Tribes of the Sun?”
“That’s what they call us now, is it?” the Traveler asked with an amused chuckle. “The Tribes of the Sun.” He had come to a stop in front of Thornton and seemed to be trying out the words on his tongue. “Interesting. Although it makes sense: my power waxes during the daytime and my brother’s wanes. Though why they chose to group all of them together confuses me. But,” he said, turning to face Thornton, “to answer your question: yes. They are my people. Or they were. I’m not sure anymore . . . Time and relationships are so . . . foreign to me now.”
Thornton was silent but intrigued. He wondered what else the ousted god would tell him.
“Your brother—that’s the one they call the Holder, right?”
The Traveler looked away; Thornton must have hit a nerve.
“Ahmaan Ka. Yes. That’s right.” His voice was distant. “He was my brother. Once.”
Thornton didn’t feel like asking him what he meant by that. Instead, he listened, hoping that the god would continue. He did.
“But he betrayed me,” he said, fury burning behind his wild red eyes. “He took the woman I loved, and he forced himself on her. He defiled her, debased her. That beautiful, perfect woman—gone.”
Thornton could see that his fist was clenched and trembling. He’d seen the wrath of one god already; he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see another’s. So, trying to sound understanding, he asked, “What happened?”
The Traveler looked at him, and the fury seemed to subside. “The damage was already done,” he said. “And it’s how I know that the gods of creation have a sense of humor: the woman I love would go on to have exactly what she could never choose between,” he said. “Twins.”
Thornton was silent.
After a moment, the Traveler spoke again.
“It’s why they call her the Mother of Wolves, and it’s also why her children are called Sons of the Traveler—because both of those things are true,” he said. He turned away. “Those born with the gift of farstepping are my children. And those known as Wolfwalkers are the sons of my brother, Ahmaan Ka.” He paused and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice seemed calmer, more controlled. “But she loved them both because that’s the kind of person that Asha Imha-khet was. And it’s why I can’t stand to see her imprisoned for one moment longer. Now come,” he said, starting off once again. “We’re nearly there.”
***
They had come to the edge of the infinite desert that seemed to have taken a lifetime to cross. The Traveler had been silent the rest of the way, and Thornton wasn’t about to change that. As the sand had gradually given way to grass and dirt, Thornton had started to feel something; he wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it was strange. Powerful. Beckoning.
He hoped it was Miera. Because if it wasn’t, he wasn’t sure he would like what it was.
And that was when he saw it: the figure he’d seen over and over again during his journey. It was the woman of his visions, only she was so much clearer now than she had been any other time he’d seen her before. She was wearing white, just as she had all those times before, only this time he was able to see her hair.
It was silver.
Silver from roots to ends. Silver—and not at all like Miera’s.
This wasn’t Miera; this was . . . someone else.
Guardian, she said, her voice echoing in his mind, do not lose your way. Yours is a difficult path, fraught with danger, but it is necessary. I am sorry. I have tried to warn you many times before this, but I could never reach you.
Thornton looked at her in wide-eyed disbelief. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “Who are you?” he finally asked.
I am the One Who Goes Between, she answered, but that is not important. What is important is that you remember why you are here, and for whom. Never, ever lose sight of that.
“I don’t understand,” he started to say, but before he could she was gone.
Thornton looked around for her, sure that she would come back, but she was nowhere to be found.
“We’re here,” said the Traveler from up ahead.
Thornton, still dazed from the apparition, shook his head and walked toward the Traveler.
“Place your hammer there, on the ground,” the god said as he pointed to an unremarkable piece of green grass growing on the edge of the desert. Looking ahead, Thornton was surprised to see that the air in front of them was wavy and strange, the way it would get on a hot day.
Thornton did as he was commanded but looked around, confused.
“Is this it?” he asked, placing his hammer handle-up. “The entrance to the Otherworld?”
“It is,” said the Traveler. His voice was steady. Calm. Almost regretful.
“How do I get through?” he asked.
“You don’t,” the Traveler answered as he moved toward the Hammer. “We aren’t here for you.”
Before Thornton could react, the god grasped the Hammer of the Worldforge with both hands, raising it high into the air and bringing it down in a furious, powerful arc. It slammed into the ground and bathed the air around them in its glorious blue glow. He did it a second time, and Thornton heard something crack.
“What are you doing?” Thornton asked, but he got no answer. Just a look from the red-eyed god whose face was masked in pain.
A third time, the Traveler drove the Hammer into the ground, and again Thornton heard something crack. Up ahead, he saw what he could only think was a tear in reality itself.
The Traveler was unrelenting in his actions and continued to smash the black steel head of Thornton’s hammer deep into the ground of Khel-hârad.
And finally, when Thornton thought that the world itself would pull apart, the Traveler stopped.
And a familiar voice that Thornton had never expected to hear reached his ears.
“You have done well, Lash’kun Yho, and for that I am grateful. When I am finished, I will give you what you were promised.”
It was a deep voice, hollow and scorched, and as empty as Khel-hârad was immense.
The Traveler turned to Thornton, pain and longing filling his eyes, and his whispered apology of “I am so sorry” was the second-to-last thing that Thornton had expected.
The last thing Thornton expected was the one thing standing before him right now: the once-Khyth and now-Breaker, D’kane.