After the failed attempt to break through the Long Hall’s portal, Joelle’s days grew crowded with memories. For the first time since her arrival, she did not forcefully shove them away. There was no longer any reason. She assumed the thoughts of her parents were driven by how she would soon join them in death. It was only a matter of time.
Three things had united her parents most of all—their love for each other, Joelle, and their love of silence. Her mother could go weeks without speaking a word. And yet Joelle had loved her company, for her mother’s silence had been sparked by a force as strong as any mage-heat. Joelle’s mother was a telepath, and the most she ever spoke was in preparing her daughter for the gift’s arrival. Which should have come during her eighteenth winter but did not. Instead, Joelle’s awareness grew, this ability of hers to see beyond physical limits. Joelle took this to be a living sign of her tainted blood.
Her father was a hunter. He had supplied game to his wife’s clan, and thus they had met, fallen in love, and broken a thousand years of restrictions. And so her mother had been banished. Soon after, Joelle had arrived. The young woman now imprisoned for the crime of being born.
Twice more Joelle sought to break through the Long Hall’s portal, weaving her spells in the moonlight and flinging her sparkling blades. She was certain now that Trace observed her. She intended to confront him, demand to know why he simply did not release the door spells and allow her to flee. But Trace had taken to avoiding her. He did not even attend his classes. As though he was waiting for something. What, she had no idea. But Joelle began spending much of her nights in the library. Several times she sensed the fleeting presence of an observer. She assumed it was Trace, who no doubt thought she searched for more powerful spells of warcraft. But he was wrong. She had another target in mind altogether.
She was only sleeping a few hours each night, between the library and the memory assaults. Joelle was therefore very surprised by how the moment came, in the breath between sleep and wakefulness. Then suddenly she was free for the first time since attacking the portal.
Free, yet not free. For as soon as she emerged, she was swept up and away. Through the tiny crack in the wall, across the moonlit expanse, up, up, and away . . .
Back to the place she had hoped she would never see again.
Joelle stood upon the desert ledge. The valley separating her from the ancient city was cast in the silver glow of a waning moon. The world was empty, silent, and yet she could sense the approach of that same dread presence.
The clarity of her vision was such that not even night could hide away the crimson mage. His arrival was marked by a bizarre cloud of metallic insects. Long before they tightened into the shape of wizard and cloak and staff and orb, she knew it was him. She wanted to flee, or at least turn away, but the same force that had brought her here gripped her with relentless strength. She saw how the buzzing insects flitted beneath the cowl, as though fashioning a face she hoped she would never see.
The hand holding the orb raised, and the crimson mage was joined by a contingent of ghostly warriors. This group held to no strict rank and made no sound as they marched. How could they, since they had neither body nor physical form. They were as vague as the moonlight, as silent as the death they wore. They drifted up and onto the distant ridge, where before, the knights had sat and drank and enjoyed the slaughter.
The wizard pointed his staff down into the valley, and at that moment a second horde rose from the valley floor. Instantly Joelle knew them to be the defeated warriors who had raced down the hillside to their doom. The new ranks of ghoulish soldiers quietly slipped down the ledge, down into the valley where their fellows waited. The wizard lifted his staff, and the army sank into the rocks and vanished in a final few wisps of fog and remorse.
Then the mage noticed her.
Joelle felt his furious perception like a fist to her soul. She fought against the force that gripped her still, knowing he was about to lift his staff and send the ghostly hordes against her . . .
In the far distance an illumination rose, a light so intense it pressed the mage back a step. For once she was not the one assaulted, because for Joelle the light carried a sense of inexpressible joy.
She knew with the certainty that such journeys carried that this was why she had come. She was meant to see this. The light was intended for her.
And with that awareness she was lifted up, up, and drawn away. But not back to her stone chamber. Instead, she flew across the vast distance to a different desert, a different valley, one filled with a light that sparked her soul in a way she could not fathom, much less name.
There at the valley’s heart stood a man. At least, she thought he was both male and human, but the light was so intense all she could really see was his silhouette. He held something aloft in both hands, his arms stretched high above his head, his back arched almost painfully, and then she realized . . .
The man was in ecstasy.
He reveled in the power that gripped him. He was flooded with an elation so potent Joelle felt it as well, as though she could communicate with him not through words but through pleasure.
She wanted to reach out to him, to ask him who he was and whether he would help her . . .
The instant the thoughts took form, she was drawn away. The break was as intense as a slap to her psyche, as though she had been caught in a wrongful deed. All the way back, across meadows and valleys and forest, she argued with the force and fought its relentless grip. How could she be expected to refuse help from whatever quarter she could? How could she not strive to break free?