Rylin had never flown through the shifts before, but that wasn’t what made this journey his strangest yet beyond a border.
Once travelers left a realm, they usually encountered a shifting land that resembled what they’d departed, unless they rode well beyond the five realms, or an exceptionally violent storm had passed. Occasionally the void itself might be glimpsed during a storm, but usually reality rebuilt itself over the blank canvas.
This time, there was nothing. When the ko’aye had said only dark skies lay beyond the borders, he hadn’t fully imagined what that would look like. The star-shot black stretched to infinity. So alarming was this sight that Rylin dug out a notched coin his father had given him and used it to sense for Erymyr.
After a long, agonizing moment, he found the realm. It served as a reassuring beacon star to orient him. He breathed out a sigh of relief.
“What has happened?” Lelanc asked, turning her feathery neck to glance at him.
“I was just making sure the Goddess hadn’t already destroyed everything.” Rylin looked over to Thelar, riding dark-feathered Drusa. “I sensed Erymyr.”
“What of the other realms?” Thelar asked.
It was a worthy question. Just because Erymyr existed didn’t mean the Goddess hadn’t destroyed the others. The two spell casters gradually verified the existence of four more realms using bits of clothing and personal equipment that had been crafted there. The ko’aye asked if there was a way to know if their home aerie was intact as well, but neither man could help, for they hadn’t been to that land to acquire anything. The Fragments, where many of the ko’aye had relocated, were as intact as ever, which was the only solace Rylin could offer.
After, they lapsed into silence. Rylin kept expecting Thelar to comment upon the joy, or fear, of flight, but he remained quiet. Rylin didn’t intrude. They both had a lot to think about.
They flew far and wide, ranging not for realms and fragments, but for the spaces between, where the chaos spirits roamed. And search though they might, they found none.
After many hours of this, the ko’aye informed them they needed a rest, and Rylin, whose legs and back had grown stiff, didn’t object. Lelanc told him they’d sensed a fragment far beyond his sight. By mutual agreement they bore toward it.
It proved little more than a quarter mile across either way. But it held a small freshwater lake and a meadow. They landed, and Rylin and Thelar dismounted and removed their gear. The ko’aye snuffled at the dark grasses, striated with lines of turquoise. Apparently they were palatable, for the animals set to.
“I thought you were meat eaters,” Rylin said.
Lelanc looked up at him, a long strand of vegetation hanging from one side of her beak. “We eat whatever is best to be eaten.”
Rylin and Thelar made do with a waterskin and jerked meat that tasted like someone had put too much salt on a wet boot.
Afterward, the two ko’aye lay down where the humans sat and the four discussed their next steps.
“We know the chaos spirits are drawn to magic,” Rylin said. “What if we activate the shard and see if that lures them here?”
“A reasonable idea,” Thelar said. “But what if that attracts the Goddess? She’s out hunting for hearthstones, and that might get her attention.”
“Good point,” Rylin said.
“I have thought another thing.” Drusa’s voice, as ever, was rasping. “Ko’aye can seek spirit things and then chase them to you. It is like a hunting trick.”
“That sounds dangerous,” Rylin said.
Drusa squawked. “We have no fear. We know what they are, and teach our young to escape them, for many lives of elders. We can outrun them.”
“We fly better without you,” Lelanc said. “Do not take offense.”
“None taken. But are you sure?”
“I am eager to move again,” Lelanc said. “This land bores me. The hunting mood is mine.”
“It will be easier to capture the chaos spirits if we’re on solid ground,” Thelar mused. “I was worried about how I’d work the spells and steady the containers while we were flying.”
After only a little more debate, the matter was decided. Rylin watched as the ko’aye stepped to the edge of the fragment and threw themselves into the void. They caught a current, spread their wings, and circled away. Rylin had convinced them to wear their saddles, arguing that if the chaos spirits proved too dangerous and all four of them had to flee, there’d be no time to put them back on.
Drusa and Lelanc banked over the top of the lone hill near the center of their fragment. Before long, the starry darkness swallowed them, but he began to pace, lost in worry.
“Asrahn would tell you to rest and save your energy,” Thelar said after a time.
Rylin inwardly agreed that the Master of Squires probably would have advised against the pacing, but Thelar saying so was an irritant. Rylin sat down and uncapped his waterskin. Thelar was already seated on a smaller boulder across from him. When Rylin finished drinking he found the exalt watching, as if he had something on his mind and was reluctant to speak.
“If you’ve something to say, say it,” Rylin said. “We’ve apparently got time.”
“I was wondering how your talk with Tesra went.”
That caught him off guard. “How did you know about that?”
“M’vai mentioned it.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t mean to pry,” Thelar said quickly.
“No, it’s fine. We parted friends. I think I said what I needed. I apologized,” he added.
“Did she forgive you?”
“I think she’s moving in that direction. That’s not the important thing, though, is it? I mean, that part’s her choice. My part is acknowledging what I did.”
Thelar seemed to mull that over, then spoke hesitantly. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Go right ahead.”
“How do you…” The exalt’s words trailed off.
“How do I what?”
He sighed. “One of the things that was always so irritating about you is that you’d just go and do something. You don’t think very carefully about it at all, but most of the time it works out for you.”
Rylin let out a bark of laughter.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Your perspective’s funny. I made a fool of myself more times than you know.”
“I know about plenty of those times,” Thelar said bitterly. Then he blinked. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I trust my instincts. I didn’t have any right to, earlier, but now I have experience. And you’re doing it yourself. You’re impressed I apologized to Tesra? You kept your cool with Cerai from the start. You set aside all your anger and worry about your family, because you knew we needed Cerai’s knowledge and tools. Asrahn would have been proud you could do that.”
“It may look like I’m setting it aside,” Thelar said. “But I worry about them all the time.”
Rylin was hardly surprised. “How many are there? You’ve said your family’s in Alantris, but that’s all I know.”
“My parents. My brother and his wife. My two sisters. Nephews, nieces, three uncles. Cousins, dozens of family friends.… Surely some of them made it.” He looked down at his feet, lost in his own terrible visions. “I find myself rooting for this one or that one more than another and then hating myself. I’ll be delighted if any of them survive.” Finally, he forced himself away from dark musings. “Where’s your family?”
“Erymyr. Mostly around Lake Dahrial.”
“That’s right. I remember. Pretty country. I’ve always liked the water, although I’ve never had much time with it.”
“Maybe when this is all over you could take up sailing.”
“You’re assuming a lot, aren’t you? Including we come through alive? You always were an optimist.” He almost sounded light. “I’m not sure I’d have time to learn sailing, even then.”
Rylin dismissed his worry with the wave of a hand. “Let’s say it all turns out well. What do you want?”
“I haven’t gotten much further than wishing my family alive.”
“Do you settle down? Do you want to join the Altenerai? I’d stand for you.”
The exalt’s dark eyes met his own, their regard so piercing it felt as though he bored into them. His brows were drawn, and Rylin worried that he suspected mockery.
He affected a casual manner. “I can about guarantee Elenai would back you as well. And Commander N’lahr. We need more sorcerers in the corps. I’d stand M’Vai, too.”
“What about Tesra?” Thelar asked.
“That depends on what she does next. You and M’vai have already proved yourselves.”
The exalt exhaled slowly. He was silent for a long moment. “I’m honored. Truly. I’m honored. You think they’d have us?”
“Damned right we’d have you.”
“What would happen to the exalt auxiliary?”
Rylin hadn’t thought that far. “It seems like it was a bad idea to split our forces. If the Altenerai had been getting better magical tutelage the last few years rather than having it mostly focused on the exalts maybe I’d be a better mage.”
“An adjunct corps isn’t necessarily a bad idea, if it’s done right. Don’t set it up like a rival group, but an organization where those who have fine magical abilities but can’t meet the other martial requirements can train to be useful in combat situations.”
There were other venues for magical training in the realms, but there had never been one set aside quite as Thelar suggested.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Rylin said. “If you join the corps, maybe you can see it happen.” He pointed over to packs. “Speaking of sorcery, maybe we should go over how to trap the chaos spirits. The summary version you gave me was fine, but it seems like we have extra time.”
Thelar stilled.
His friend’s change in affect was so pronounced Rylin immediately took note. “What’s wrong?”
Thelar didn’t answer, and Rylin recognized by the inward stare and focused breathing he had engaged with the inner world.
Before Rylin did the same, he searched the nearby environment to ensure its security, and even as he confirmed that, he felt a presence besides their own, one that came with a sense of urgency.
Someone was using a hearthstone to reach out to them. Someone anxious. Was this the communication N’lahr had told him to be ready for?
Thelar activated his shard.
An image coalesced out of the darkness, a feminine shape built of mist and moonbeams. Tesra. She brushed long hair from her forehead.
“Thelar,” she said, with a sigh of relief. “We haven’t long. Listen. Cerai made a pretense of helping Commander N’lahr. She was really experimenting on him and now he’s trapped in suspension. I think he’s still alive.”
Rylin started to ask for more detail. “Why is she—”
“Just listen! She’s keeping the commander’s body in her laboratory. Cerai’s been altering her own body so that she’s kind of a living hearthstone. She’s also planning to make a god of herself when she destroys the Goddess.”
Rylin was aghast about N’lahr. He wasn’t entirely surprised by the rest of the information. “Is Elenai back yet?”
“No, there’s no word from her or Kyrkenall. Look, I don’t think you should come back. If we fight the Goddess here, Cerai will kill her, and then she’ll get all of her power. And listen, there’s more. Using the hearthstone attracts the attention of the Goddess. M’vai tried to contact you but she got the Goddess instead and it killed her, through the connection. M’vai’s dead. She just … disintegrated into powder.”
Rylin hadn’t known M’vai well, and only while she was under constant duress, so she probably wasn’t always driven and humorless. While he had respected her skill and bravery, he was still startled by how hard the news of her death struck him, because he hadn’t thought of them as close. Thelar let out a shaking, low-voiced no.
“You’ve got to be careful using the stones,” Tesra continued. “I—”
“There’s something in the hearthstone now,” Thelar interrupted. “A presence.”
He was right; Rylin detected its approach.
Tesra looked quickly behind her. The illusion of her proximity was so profound Rylin peered over her shoulder before understanding whatever worried her was in her physical location, not theirs.
“Cerai’s coming,” Tesra said. Her hands spun frantically and Rylin guessed she strove to close the hearthstone she used. Then one of her hands lifted to her temple as if she’d been struck by a headache. Her image vanished.
Rylin stared at where she’d been. Thelar shut down their hearthstone. “Tesra’s in terrible danger,” Rylin said.
“Yes,” Thelar agreed. “If that was Cerai, she’s going to know, very soon, exactly what Tesra told us.”
Rylin nodded slowly. “I’m sorry about M’vai.”
“Yes.” Thelar didn’t add that he was the only one of the loyal exalts left. Of the five, one had died in battle, one had resigned, and two had been slain by the Goddess.
“We can’t just sit here,” Rylin said. “Waiting. We should try to reach Elenai.”
“You heard Tesra. I’m just about certain that was the Goddess down there in the stone. If we use it again, right now, she’ll find us.”
“Suppose Elenai heads back to Cerai with the weapon? Tesra was right. I think fighting the Goddess in her realm’s a terrible idea. We have to warn her and Kyrkenall.”
Thelar’s habitual frown deepened. “I hear you.”
“Let’s get on with it then. I know Elenai; I helped train her.”
“You may be better suited for the search,” Thelar admitted grudgingly. “But if I sense the presence of the Goddess rise very much I’m pulling you back.”
Rylin sorted through a belt pouch for the red stone he’d taken from Kanesh as a squire stationed there years before.
“Don’t anchor yourself too deeply in the hearthstone,” Thelar advised. “Not like last time. If I have to shut it down fast that could get you trapped.”
“Understood.”
Rylin rubbed the smooth Kaneshi river stone between thumb and forefinger, then stretched his shoulders. He exhaled. “Let’s do this.”
Thelar bent to the hearthstone and cycled it open.
Rylin threw his threads into it then launched himself up and out, thinking of Kanesh.
Either owing to his intensity, or growing experience, Rylin found himself hurtling forward far faster than when he’d sought Varama. He had a vague impression of stars flying past on either side, and then he appeared in a realm of howling darkness. Where was he? The wind screamed like a living thing.
Rylin willed himself up, seeking perspective, and finally caught a hint of muted light, reddened by a vast storm of sand sweeping over the landscape. So maybe he had found Kanesh.
If he had arrived in the right place, now he had to find the right person, and so he thought of Elenai’s chestnut hair and shining confidence, her steely-eyed determination and certainty. Her hearthstone.
Thelar shook his shoulders violently.
Rylin shot back to his body, and while he blinked in disorientation he saw their shard glowing like a miniature sun.
Thelar shut it down and sat back, breathing heavily.
“What happened?” Rylin asked.
“We definitely had the attention of the Goddess. Did you find Elenai?”
“I found Kanesh, but couldn’t sense a hearthstone. Maybe if I’d had more time. There was a huge sandstorm. I hope she and Kyrkenall weren’t caught in the open.”
Thelar continued to stare at the stone.
“Why are you watching it like that?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Nothing happened, though. “Should we try again?”
“Let it sit for a while. I know you want to do something. So do I. But right now I feel like we’ve been lucky and we should wait before we push it.”
“So we just sit here on this rock in the middle of nowhere?”
“Asrahn always said it was the waiting before battles that was the hardest. Remember?”
Rylin remembered. And knew.
Thelar kept talking. “He said it was toughest when you were waiting for a scout to get back. That’s kind of where we are. We need more information before we can act. We dare not try much without it.” Thelar continued as though he were the direct conduit to all of Asrahn’s wisdom. “What he would probably advise us to do is rest.”
Almost, Rylin had forgotten how Thelar could sound like a know-it-all. He resisted a strong temptation to point out he had more experience in the field than the person quoting advice. Not only would that be counterproductive, it was beneath him. “You’re right. Why don’t you try first? I’ll take watch.”
“Very well. Don’t let me sleep long.”
While the exalt lay with head pillowed in his arms, Rylin sat staring into the void, occasionally rising to pace and ensure the security of their position. He didn’t expect anything dangerous to come wafting out of the darkness, but he was still cautious.
There was no sign of the ko’aye. Rylin’s mind wandered down dark paths, seeking solutions and finding only their absence. He longed for Varama’s counsel and again pondered N’lahr’s words. She was alive out there, somewhere, and she and N’lahr had been making plans, probably using more information than he himself knew. They might already have been in touch with Elenai.
He felt certain the commander had anticipated his own eventual capture or debilitation and wondered what he had set in motion to counter it. Most of all he wished that he had been included in the planning, and that there was something more for him to do besides wait.
When he traded places with Thelar he fell quickly to sleep, but his dreams were plagued with worry. Shapely ghosts beckoned toward the void’s edge, where Varama’s voice called advice he couldn’t understand. That voice resolved itself into Thelar, and Rylin felt a nudge against his back.
He came awake not knowing what Thelar was saying, for his attention shifted almost immediately to the moaning wind.
A storm cast up the soil in a stinging cloud that pelted his skin.
“It came up out of nowhere,” Thelar said.
Rylin pulled on his boots and grabbed his khalat. Beyond their little island the sky had grown alive with lightning. Thunder rolled. He couldn’t imagine how he had slept through any of it.
He worked swiftly to hook his uniform coat closed. “Any sign of Lelanc or Drusa?”
“No. Nothing.”
“I hope they found somewhere to roost.”
Thelar’s reply was interrupted by a loud cracking sound. Both men looked to their right, where an immense boulder on the edge of their fragment splintered and dropped into the void, followed by nearly ten feet of soil. A fault line followed in its wake, zig-zagging toward the center of their fragment, accompanied by alarming rumbles. Even a huge storm shouldn’t have been shaking a fragment apart. But then this looked to be no ordinary storm.
“I hope we have somewhere safe to roost,” Rylin said. “We’d better grab our gear.”
He snatched his sword belt, watching their surroundings as he buckled. A blast of blue lightning tore through the sky.
Thelar hefted his saddlebag and pointed to the lone rise beyond the little freshwater lake. “That’s the most solid point.”
A second and third crack in the firmament crept in from the edge, and then accelerated toward them. As the ground trembled, Rylin grabbed his saddlebag and the two raced toward the center of their sanctuary.
The devastation moved faster. The crack sped on, diverted before them, and widened. Rylin jumped even as the gap lengthened. He conjured wind threads and pushed both of them up and over the gap. He stumbled. Thelar hit and rolled, losing grip of his saddlebag. Rylin dragged him to his feet as the exalt snatched his gear.
They ran toward the little lake and the hill beyond as rocks and sand rose, turning slowly, as though they were being inspected by curious, invisible giants.
The water floated into the air in a shimmering contiguous mass, and the storm winds delivered it directly into their path.
Before he could counter, Rylin was in the midst of the water, and had to swim to move forward, kicking with booted feet. The saddlebag was torn from his hand, and there was no time to lament its passing, for he was fighting to survive. The water obscured his vision, and he couldn’t tell if he was actually moving forward, which was all the more frightening because he had little air in his lungs. His head pounded and spots shone before his eyes. His body was desperate to breathe, no matter that doing so would kill him.
He kicked on. His vision spiraled.
Then he dropped free from the water, sodden, landing hard in black mud. He took in a grateful breath. The wind picked up and the water fell away like a wave of rain against his legs. He pushed himself up and spotted Thelar lying two bodylengths behind, within a shallow pool of water. He dashed over to lift him, pounding the exalt’s back. Thelar coughed and struggled to get his hands under him.
Rylin saw that only about five feet of solid ground remained to their rear. The water was flowing that direction and plunging over the side, right past Thelar’s saddlebag.
Thelar spit up water. The ground behind them crumbled further.
“Up!” Rylin cried.
Thelar was slow to move. Rylin pushed at him and set him stumbling away, then dashed back, sliding in the mud. As he reached for the bag the ground rumbled once more and a huge crescent of land shuddered, dropping away, taking the saddlebag with it.
That meant all the stones for capturing chaos spirits were gone. They’d each carried two. There was no time to worry about them. He sprinted away as the land shook, crumbling into the void behind him. Ahead, Thelar had tripped, and struggled now to push to his feet. Rylin wrenched him up and pulled him forward. After the first few steps Thelar got his balance back. An over-the-shoulder glance showed the destruction following them in a wave.
They arrived finally at the base of the rise and forced their way up. Once on its height, no more than a dozen feet above their little domain, Rylin searched their surroundings. More a plateau than a hill, it was less than fifty feet across, and apart from it they had no more than ten ragged feet of soil in any direction, most of which was slope. The hungry void clawed at the edges.
“I don’t think this is going to last much longer,” Rylin said. He looked down at his ring. Even with a command to activate, its glow was dim. “And the rings aren’t going to help us. You’ll have to use your shard.”
Thelar coughed and nodded, but he looked so peaked Rylin chose to use the device instead, activating it from within Thelar’s belt pouch.
Just as he cycled the stone open it blazed so brightly it was visible even through the leather. Thelar yelped and shut the thing down, shouting about the Goddess looking at them.
Water trailed from the flattened mass of Thelar’s dark hair and down his cheek. He was soaked through and looked utterly miserable. “I thought you liked water,” Rylin said.
“I don’t like drowning.”
It was a feeble-enough joke, but Rylin laughed.
“What are we going to do now?” Thelar asked. “We’ve nothing left to trap the spirits with.”
“Or even to fuel a fire.” From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of light. Turning his head to find it, he witnessed a landscape glimmer into and then out of existence. For a moment he thought he had dreamed that red mountain, but it reappeared, then melted away like candle wax.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Rylin said, and as he finished, a second landscape blinked once, twice, then resolved into a purple body of water lying beside a land of red dunes.
“Now you have,” Thelar commented dryly.
Rylin watched as the land vanished once more. “Any ideas why this is happening?”
“I’d hazard that there’s something fundamentally awry with the foundation of reality,” Thelar said.
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m glad one of us is comforted, because I’m certainly not.”
A hilly gray landscape blinked into existence. Red spiked plants sprouted sparsely across its surface. On their right, Rylin saw sprays of diamonds lying on higher hills. Their own plateau appeared to be resting, somewhat off center, upon a low mound.
Rylin was peering over the side when Thelar called to him.
“Rylin. Look up.”
Just as it seemed the Shifting Lands had settled into a comprehensible pattern, the sky had split open to reveal a void alive with slowly spiraling golden stars.
Two winged figures flew out from the gap, their feathered heads stretched out ahead of them. Lelanc and Drusa.
While their appearance was reassuring, Rylin spotted shifting lines of white force in pursuit. Something about them suggested grasping eagerness.
“They found the chaos spirits,” Rylin said. “And we’ve nothing to trap them with.”