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I woke with a pounding headache. The last thing I remembered was Bataar standing over me battling the golems as they pressed in on us. I blinked in the darkness, every blink bringing blinding pain. Aching, grinding, spiking pain filled my head making my ears and throat and teeth hurt until I wished I could just fade back into unconsciousness.
Lights flickered in the distance – bright, but small.
Fires? Perhaps.
I shivered in the cold of the night. I was lying on something hard. I felt awful.
Exhaustion swept over me and I slept.
I woke again to jostling. I felt like I was in a cart being pulled over a bumpy road. I should get up and figure out where I was and what was happening. I couldn’t seem to open my eyes, though I felt a little warmer – as if the sun was shining on me, warming my body.
I slept again.
When I woke this time, I sat up.
“Mmmph,” someone said nearby.
It was night again and the moon was faint, though many campfires dotted the land around me. I lifted a hand to my throbbing temples experimentally and blinked in the darkness.
“Tor?” Bataar whispered. There was a shuffling sound as he sat up.
Relief filled me. I hadn’t been able to admit it to myself, but I’d thought he was dead. I had no sense of Saboraak nearby. Hopefully, she had escaped and was well away.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In a cage.”
The bars of the cage were easier to see in the dark now that he pointed them out. Who had man-sized cages lying around? Did someone think to themselves, ‘Hmm, if I catch a man, I might want to throw him in a cage. Maybe I should acquire a few of the correct size.’
The cage was on the back of a cart harnessed to a pair of wolf-golems. Of course. I was never going to be rid of wolf-golems.
“They were keeping some of the oosquer in the cage,” Bataar explained.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“You’ve been in and out for three days.”
Three days? That wasn’t a good thing.
“Thank you for defending me,” I said. “That’s the last thing I remember. You were standing over me, defending me.”
“Maybe that’s what Zin’s prophecy was about. You needed me to keep you alive.”
“Or maybe it was just you being a good guy. You have a self-defeating tendency to do that. Where are the guards?”
“They don’t bother to guard us,” Bataar said. “The lock is strong and there is nowhere to go. Do you want water? They left a skin of it behind. I bandaged your injuries and cleaned you up a bit. Got rid of that old sack. I couldn’t do anything about your hair, but the rest seems to be okay.”
“My hair?” in a panic I reached up to feel my head. I still had hair. I sagged in relief and then snorted a laugh. I was worried about hair when I was in a cage captured by my enemies? How vain did that make me?
“It’s silver over your temples. It looks like an extension of that crown.”
“I don’t care. I’m unlikely to survive to old age and get grey hair naturally.”
“Well, you’ve made it this far. You might surprise yourself.”
We were quiet for a while.
“Are we headed east?” I asked.
“Yes. Through the mountains toward Questan.”
“I hope they were warned in time.”
I hoped that Sabroaak and the others with her had warned them and then flown far, far away. I hoped that they weren’t planning any wild rescue missions. I didn’t hear her in my head. She must be far enough away.
“Apeq leads the army and the golems, but you knew that,” Bataar said.
“And you were trying to tell me something about a song.”
He sounded surprised. “Yes. I thought you weren’t listening.”
“I was a touch preoccupied. But I heard you. What were you trying to say?”
“The song I was singing – it’s the song the Kav’ai sing to our dead. A way to send their souls to rest.”
“It was fitting to sing it over the city. Thank you.” If I was going to die a captive, I could at least try to be civil and thoughtful to Bataar. It was the least I could do.
“It releases the souls of the dead – or so we say.”
“That’s nice.”
How were we going to get out of this cage? Perhaps there was a way to pick the lock. Or to trick Apeq into letting us out. Or something I hadn’t thought of yet.
“Remember how you could freeze the golems but Apeq could reanimate them?”
“It’s something I was hoping to forget.”
“He reanimated every golem that wasn’t too badly damaged in the battle.”
“Great.”
Bataar was just full of good news.
He laughed wryly. “I thought I could send their souls to rest so that the frozen golems couldn’t be reanimated.”
I froze.
Wait.
I looked at him, looking so serious in the faint light – like always.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I could hardly say that I’d thought he was being silly and wasting time. I could hardly say that I thought he was a superstitious fool at the time, and I was only just now realizing he’d actually been trying to help.
“It didn’t work. I have a feeling that I don’t have the power to release those souls.”
“It was a nice try.”
“I think it has to be you,” he said, his eyes bright in the moonlight. “I think it might be the role of the Ko’roi. I mean, you are the one who controls the World of Legends, who is supposed to recreate it and fill it with the heroes of this world. Maybe you have the power to release these souls back to there.”
“I’m not sure there still is a World of Legends. It was burning to the ground the last time I saw it.” His theory kind of made sense. Especially if you were Kav’ai.
“There’s an easy way to find out.” He pointed and through the dark, I saw another cart hitched to wolf-golems. The cart that held the mobile doorway. “If we can get you to that door, you can try it out and see.”
“If we get out of these cages, I can’t help but think I might have other priorities,” I said. “Escaping, for instance. Or maybe stopping Apeq and Eventen – should I assume Eventen is here?”
“Yes. And a Magika named Ambrosia who makes this Eventen seem like a newborn puppy in comparison. But the World of Legends is a priority. If it needs to be rebuilt, then that has to be our first priority. How can you stop an army that can just be revived? We need a way to permanently stop them.”
I clenched my jaw. He had a point.
“And only you can do that,” he reminded me.
How pleasant.
“Why did you stay with me when you could have run, Bataar?” I asked. “I know that you wish you were the Ko’roi. Maybe you could be if I had died.”
He shuffled uncomfortably. “I don’t wish that. You know I didn’t want to lead my people.”
“Then why do you stiffen every time you see me?”
“Because it shouldn’t have been you. It should have been someone worthy who knows and treasures our people. Someone who understands our ways and wants to preserve them. Someone who would protect us from the ever-growing power of Ko’Torenth. Someone like me, even if I didn’t want it to be me.”
“Then why did you save my life?”
He laughed. “Well just because you’re a terrible choice for the Ko’roi doesn’t mean that you aren’t the one with the job. I’d die to keep you alive. For the sake of my people. For the sake of the world.”
Heavy.
“Would you feel better if you knew that I plan to live in Kav’ai when all this is over?” I asked.
He looked surprised in the dim light. “You do?”
“Actually, Saboraak and those other Green dragons you saw are all planning to come with me. They want to establish a dragon city there. Don’t look so horrified. Dragons will protect your people. They’ll live at peace with you.”
“I’m not horrified. I’m in awe.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Zin said this would happen.”
“She can be remarkably perceptive.”
He grabbed my shoulders pulling me into an awkward hug.
“Ummm.” I patted him awkwardly. I didn’t like hugs.
“We will be brothers! Both married to the sisters Zin and Zyla!”
Skies and stars!
“Whoa! Easy there. Is this your way of saying that you’re getting married?”
I’d never said anything about marrying Zyla. He was really rushing things if he’d gone and given his word to Zin. We were all in the middle of a war and none of us might survive it. Didn’t he see that? Didn’t he realize –
His words cut off my thoughts.
“We were married before I flew away with Hubric. We married in the caves. It was a beautiful celebration. It was our one sadness that you and Zyla could not be there.”
I felt like someone had hit me with a club. Married? Bataar and Zin?
“But you only just met!” I gasped. “You hardly know each other.”
“It was prophesied.”
“You can read those prophecies any way you want!” My voice was getting too loud, but I didn’t seem to have any control over it.
“Not this one.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not the one who speaks to his own shadow in his sleep,” Bataar replied with a smug smile.
Well, he had me there.
“Let’s get some sleep,” I said, irritably.
“There is only one blanket.”
I lay down on the cold cage floor and turned my back to him. “Consider it a wedding present.”
I had things to think about and I couldn’t be distracted by thoughts of innocent Zin marrying the least fun man in the world just because she thought it had been prophesied. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that Bataar might be right. That the key to this whole situation might be to open up that doorway and see if I could reconstruct the World of Legends somehow and send the souls of the dead from the bodies of these golems to rest there. I’d heard that the dead could move on from the World of Legends if they wanted to. I just wanted to give them that chance – and coincidently, to make the golems useless shells so they couldn’t swallow the Dominion.
It was a lot to think about when your head was aching and the guy with the blanket was saying annoying things about prophecies and marriage.
Marriage!
The fool.