LUCKY WAS standing by his bedroom door trying to decide whether to leave his room and find Thurlock—he had questions—when he heard Thurlock and Henry coming down the stairs. When he listened very carefully, he heard Han too. They all stopped on the landing, and he expected a knock—wondered if he’d somehow gotten in trouble again. But instead, he heard Thurlock say good night to Henry and then go on down the stairs.
Then a door on squeaky hinges opened across the hall, which was something he’d never expected at all because the last he looked, there was no door over there and no room behind it. Perplexing, but he’d experienced the sudden appearance of rooms in Thurlock’s house before. He continued listening to the low voices rumbling on the landing—Han’s and Henry’s.
Lucky always wanted to know what was going on, as he’d explained to Han earlier. He knew the quest to find things out shouldn’t include eavesdropping, but his conscience lost that particular battle—not for the first time—and he put his ear to the door.
“…hoped we’d have a chance to talk tonight,” Han was saying. “But Thurlock’s got his wizard on and he’s giving the orders. I’m obliged to follow them. There are some things I want to say to you, though, Henry. Tonight’s not the time for it, but I do hope it will be soon.”
“I hope so too,” Henry said. “And Han, I hope you won’t take this wrong, but I might…. If you’re having trouble with the dragon thing—”
“You saw?”
“Yes, in a way, I did. What I want to say is, sometime we should talk. I might be able to help with… making that more comfortable for you.”
Silence followed, and Lucky got an inkling of Han’s mind. Not thought—that was thoroughly guarded, but an emotion. Or perhaps several of them jumbled up.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Lucky expected Han to answer, but he heard only breathing, a sigh, and a gasp and then something Lucky did not expect—the sound of smacking lips, like the end of a lip-locking kiss.
He suddenly realized how very much too far he’d gone into privacy-breach territory and stepped back from his door, ashamed. He heard the door close across the landing and Han start to leave. But Han hesitated on the stairs, and suddenly his thought stabbed into Luccan’s brain.
“Mind your own business, Luccan. And go to sleep.”
Ashamed of himself or not, Lucky discovered he did not want to go to sleep, not now and maybe not ever, wards and wizard’s pajamas or no.
“Han, wait!” he thought, but he wasn’t surprised when Han didn’t stop. Just as Han reached the front door, Lucky half stumbled off the bottom step and said, too loudly in the quiet house, “Wait, I’m sorry.”
Han pulled open the front door, stepped outside and very deliberately closed it.
“I’m scared,” Luccan said, very quietly, his voice breaking as it hadn’t in months. He stood where he was, hugging himself.
After a moment, the door opened again, and Han stepped inside. The room was lit only by moonlight, and Lucky couldn’t see his face, but the long, aggrieved sigh he heard told him clearly just how badly he’d annoyed his uncle.
“You’re scared,” Han stated flatly. After a couple seconds he asked, “Of what? Sleeping?”
“Yes,” Lucky said, and managed to sound resentful, as if his fear, which he was currently thinking of as childish, was somebody else’s fault.
“Why are you taking so long?” Thurlock said, stepping in the door. He waved a hand for light and saw Han and Lucky standing in the middle of the room, ten feet apart as if ready to duel. Looking at Lucky, he asked, “What is it now?”
“Can I just go with you?”
Han said, “You’re afraid to sleep because of the things that happened last time you did?”
“No! I…. Thurlock, was it you? Did you make me forget?”
Thurlock’s eyes narrowed in concentration, and he stepped closer until he stood directly in front of Luccan. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t remember,” Lucky said, relieved somewhat just to be saying it. “The… dreams or whatever they were. I know it was horrible—gross, dark, cold, scary as hell. I can feel it! But I can’t remember it. I can’t remember anything that happened in that place except the dragon.”
“That place?”
“Well, yes. Sort of. I think. That’s how it felt.”
“Hm.” Thurlock began chin scratching and beard twisting, looking off into the distance. Some moments of silence later he turned to Han. “Do you remember?”
“Yes,” Han said.
“Place?”
“It did feel like that, sir,” Han said.
“Interesting,” Thurlock said and, clasping his hands behind his back, began to pace a few steps to-and-fro.
Lucky sat down tiredly on the second-to-the-bottom step to wait, certain Thurlock would eventually answer his question. After a few minutes, Han sat in one of the armchairs.
“It will be all right, lad,” Han thought to Lucky.
“You’re mad at me.”
“Yes, I am, but not for being scared. And that will be all right too.”
“I’m sorry, Han.”
“I know.” Han smiled gently. “And I’ll forgive you sooner or later.”
“Sooner or later?”
Han chuckled. “Don’t worry, Lucky. People don’t stop loving people because they get upset with them. It’s not the end of the world. But you do seriously need to stop eavesdropping.”
“I don’t know what you two are thinking to each other about, but I know you’re doing it, and it’s distracting, so stop, please,” Thurlock said. “To answer your question, Luccan, no. It wasn’t me. I didn’t erase or block your memories—honestly, all those books and movies in Earth where wizards do that, I’m not sure it’s even truly possible.” He paused, combing fingers through his beard in thought. After a moment, with a look of mild disgust on his face, he continued. “There is one way I can think of that might allow someone to do that—someone who was responsible for creating the experience in the first place. Tell me, do you remember anything specific? Perhaps who was there—besides Han, that is.”
Lucky started to answer. His mother, or what she had become, was the one detail he hadn’t forgotten. “M… mists, black mists,” he said, “and cold blue light.” He hadn’t changed his mind about what to say. Something—or someone—had changed the words as he spoke them. Before he could panic, Han spoke up.
“Luccan, that isn’t what you were going to say.”
“No,” Luccan answered, trying to convey how unsettling this whole situation was.
“Try again.”
“M… I can’t!”
“Calm down,” Thurlock said, then muttered to himself, “Behl’s whiskers! I could use a little break, here!” Speaking up, he said, “We’ll figure this out, Luccan. Han, what is he trying to say?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s trying to spit out, My mother. She was there, Liliana—though not herself, so to speak. Dead, maybe. Or undead. Definitely trying to manipulate him.”
“She was running the show, in this other ‘place’?”
“I’m not sure,” Han said. “Superficially, yes. But I got the feeling there was another power involved.”
Thurlock’s brows went up. “Another power like…?”
Han said, “Well—”
Lucky didn’t mean to be rude, but suddenly the same feeling that had suffused the dream world he’d been stuck in came over him, sending chills down his spine, raising goose flesh on his arms, making him so sick to his stomach that he hunched over and gagged. He knew then what it reminded him of, and he also knew how it was different. Words burst out of him, “Like Isa. Like Mahl. Like the dead things in the blue tower.”
Han said, “Yes—I wasn’t there inside the tower, but if it was like the power Isa tossed at us during that storm back in Valley City, then that was it, but—”
“Different too,” Lucky again interrupted, driven to speak by the horror he could so clearly feel, though he couldn’t see it. “Like war, killing, and like… I don’t know, icky, like science labs where they test awful things on animals, or grow human parts on them, use them like that and throw them away. That’s… that’s….” A piece of memory broke free of whatever held it back. As soon as it was clear in his mind, he wished he’d never tried to remember. “Oh, gods! Thurlock, she showed me children! Like what we saw, Han, in the tunnels. But no… different—I don’t remember, but they were dying. Like life was leaking out of them.” He tried to swallow down his nausea, breathed deep begging any powers that be to wipe the images from his mind once more. But he still saw them, and he thought his heart would explode it pounded so hard. “I’m gonna puke.”
“Outside,” Thurlock said.
Han took him by the shoulders and guided him out the door where he could lean over the railing if he truly needed to empty his stomach, and Han’s caring touch calmed him a little.
“Okay,” he whispered, “I think it’s better.” But then a moment later, “No, it’s not.”
Han held Lucky’s head and kept his hair—which had grown to nearly shoulder length—out of the way while he puked. When he was done, he thanked his uncle, quite sincerely as nobody had ever held his head while he puked before. Thurlock wizarded him some lukewarm, minty tea to wash the taste out of his mouth, and some cool water to sip when he was finished with that.
Lucky sat on the steps, and Maizie came up from the yard and sat next to him. Her cold nose on his cheek felt like kisses to make it better, and they tickled too. He laughed a little and hugged her tight.
“Thurlock,” Lucky said. “I don’t want to go to sleep. And I know there are wards, and Henry and Maizie and Lemon and Mishka are all here, and I have your pajamas—”
“You have my pajamas?”
“—and I’m sixteen and shouldn’t be afraid of the dark, but I still feel like I’m alone, and I’m afraid if I fall asleep, I’m going back there.”
“You have the Key and the Black Blade.”
“I know it should be enough, but….”
“You’re going to have to sleep sometime.”
“I know, but not yet, not tonight. Thurlock, she wants me—my mother. I’m not sure why I know that, but I do.”
Han spoke up then, “Sir, that is true. I don’t remember her words—which is odd….”
“Possibly your dragon remembers, Han,” Thurlock said. “Don’t worry about it. You were saying?”
“Right. I don’t remember her words, but that—what Luccan said—was the sense of it. She wants him to go to her, or if he doesn’t she’ll take him. What do you think that means, sir? I mean, physically he was in his bed the whole time.”
“Behl’s teeth, Han! How do you suppose I know what it means?”
Han, probably wisely, said nothing, but Lucky, probably foolishly, said, “But, sir, you said that was the wizard’s question, right? If you don’t know—”
“Enough. The hope is I’ll figure it out someday before it’s too late to do anything about it. Meanwhile, if you don’t want to sleep, fine. Han and I were on our way to see these strange bodies at the Night House—”
“We were?”
“Yes, Han, we were, though I haven’t told you yet because first, you stopped to sweet-talk your prospective beau, and then Lucky—” He stopped as if slamming on brakes. “Never mind. Luccan, I’d wanted to keep you away from those bodies in case this was all related, which I think it is, but for the second time tonight, I find myself talked into letting you do something I have misgivings about. I think I reached eleven hundred years, recently. Maybe that’s the age beyond which a wizard starts getting soft. So come with us. Let’s go.”
He started walking, and Lucky trotted to keep up with Thurlock’s amazingly brisk stride. But then he stopped.
“Wait, Thurlock!”
The old man turned around, his eyes glittering with annoyance even in moonlight. “Will this day never end!”
Lucky was pretty sure that wasn’t really a question, so he waited.
“What is it now?” Thurlock asked, making an exaggerated effort to feign calm.
“I just want to run back in—you know, for the Key and Ci—my Blade. It will only take a minute.”
“Oh,” Thurlock said. “Yes of course, do that. And from now on, don’t take the Key off, and don’t leave the house without the Blade.”
Lucky dashed in, remembering at the last minute to dash quietly because Henry was sleeping, but judging by the cat’s snarling dash up the stairs, he apparently pissed Lemon Martinez off anyway. When he got back outside, he had the Key on its chain around his neck, but he was carrying the Blade awkwardly, as he didn’t have a sheath.
“Here,” Han said, removing his sun-metal dagger with its sheath from his sandal and then tightening the straps around his leg. He took the knife out and handed Lucky the sheath. “I was going to make you a sheath, but I’ll make one for my knife instead. This one should fit the Black just fine. It’s dragon hide—better than anything I could make. Strap it into your sandal, like I had mine.”
The sheath was gorgeous. Green-gold hide, with a glittery metallic sheen. “Whoa,” Lucky said. “Thank you, Uncle Han. This is beautiful.”
“It is, isn’t it? It’s an heirloom. Something you would inherit someday anyway, so why not have it now? You’re welcome.”
Han’s smile told Lucky he was forgiven for his earlier eavesdropping crime, which was sweet, but he was going to do his best to remember the lesson. He’d felt awful once he’d realized what he’d done. He didn’t want to feel that way again.
While he installed Ciarrah in the sheath, and the sheath in his sandal straps, Han tossed his blade up and caught it.
“Stop doing that, Han,” Thurlock growled. “You make me nervous.”
“Somebody’s grouchy,” Han said, but he tossed his knife at a post in the porch rail, where it stuck.
“I’m ready,” Lucky said.
“I’d say it was about time, but you already know that,” Thurlock said as he once again strode ahead.
Lucky refrained from pointing out he’d said it anyway, but he and Han shared a mental chuckle. Lucky felt better than he had earlier. A lot better. Being with Han—and with Thurlock even though he was grumpy—brightened the world even in the dark of night. He continued to feel better until he stepped into the cold Night House.
Olana was there, sitting cross-legged on a bench near a stone slab where a dark blanket covered a small, lumpy form about the size of a misshapen eight- or nine-year-old child. Her eyes were closed, and small lights danced in her upturned palms.
“Madam,” Thurlock said.
Olana opened her eyes without haste or surprise. “Thurlock, I believe there is life in this one, though it eludes me. Perhaps you can bring it forth?”
“In this one, but not the other?” He moved between the slab with the small form and the one next to it, which held a very long form, much thinner than any person Luccan had ever met. He put his hands over the forms as if feeling for energy. After a moment he drew his hands back and let them hang at his side. He appeared to lose himself in thought.
Han had walked to the other end of the long room where three more of the ten slabs in the house were also occupied, but these faces were not covered, and the bodies were clearly human. He was standing near one of them, gazing at the face of the dead woman. Lucky quietly walked over to stand next to him.
Han turned his head to glance at him and give him a quick, sad smile, then turned back. “I knew this woman,” he said in thought. “She was a very good soldier. One of the fastest and most accurate archers I’ve ever seen. And she was kind. She had little family, so she spent a lot of her earnings taking care of the old couple who’d lived next door to her while she was growing up. Her death is a loss, lad.”
“I’m sorry, Han.”
Han didn’t respond but slowly walked over to the next corpse, a man whose head had been bashed in during the fight. It was ugly, but it wasn’t a horror like what Lucky had recently experienced, so he followed Han’s example and stayed calm.
“And this man? A Drakha. A cousin I talked with over an ale a time or two.”
Lucky didn’t respond directly but wondered to himself how Han could even recognize him. Little of his face remained undamaged.
“You’re forgetting to shield again, Luccan. I can see his face well enough, but if I couldn’t, I’d know him by the mark on his arm. It’s a scar left from an accident with a boat hook.”
Lucky tried to shield his thoughts then, as Han suggested, mostly because he didn’t want to disturb Han’s memories as he paid his respects. Privately, though, he thought this was an awful kind of thing for a man to have to do—view the bodies of people he’d known and thought well of.
“This one,” Han thought to Luccan, “she was a beauty! So full of joy, even on the eve of battle. But a fierce warrior, when that’s what was called for.”
Lucky was confused, and without considering, he blurted, “That’s a man, Han.”
Han looked at him again, this time settling his surprised gaze to meet Luccan’s. “Don’t you know that the shape of the body doesn’t always dictate the shape of the soul occupying it? Jehrine may have had a body like a man’s, but she knew herself to be a woman.” He paused for a moment, looked away as if watching a memory replay. He smiled lightly when he turned back to Lucky. He whispered, “You should have seen her dance, Luccan. Heard her sing and laugh and comfort her little brothers and sisters. Watched the way she navigated the world every day. You would have known what a strong example she was of the best a woman can be.”
Together they walked away from the three fallen soldiers to where Thurlock still stood between the other, stranger bodies.
“Olana told Thurlock she thinks one of them—the small one—is alive,” Lucky thought to Han.
“I heard. Not sure how it could be true, though.”
“I….”
Lucky’s thought drifted off as Olana locked gazes with him, her eyes jetting forth a needle-fine blaze of white light. Lucky expected the light to hurt his eyes like too-bright sun, but it didn’t. It touched Lucky’s thoughts and asked permission to enter, a respectful request from an energy that seemed at least benign if not benevolent. Instinct guided him to allow it, and when it entered, any doubt he had as to the intrinsic “goodness” of that power was washed away on a slow, gentle tide of pure light. He smiled at Olana and waited to discover her purpose. Instead, the light only showed his conscious mind what his intuition already knew.
“There is life, there,” Luccan told Han.
AS SILENCE took deep root in the Night House, Lucky’s thoughts fell still.
Then, for the first time ever, he experienced what Thurlock had tried time and again to help him find—pure intention. Without concentration or instruction, plea or wish or words at all, magic moved from within him to the world outside his mind.
Ciarrah responded instantly with a low hum. She was attached by his sandal straps to the outside of his right leg, and in the corner of his right eye he began to see her faint violet glow. Next, energy started to flow from Ciarrah up the right side of his body like a slow current until it reached the center of his chest, where the Key of Behliseth hung on its chain. The Key began to hum, adding a new pitch to Ciarrah’s, the two together so low in volume as to be nearly, but not quite, inaudible. The Key’s glow was golden, as usual, and it hovered at the bottom of Lucky’s field of vision Where the two lights met—Ciarrah’s violet and the Key’s gold, they made a band of pure white, it’s edges shimmering palest pink and soft green.
Thurlock had taken the blanket from the tall, slender form, and he blanched upon seeing the strange body lying there. “It’s as I thought. This is the type of… being I saw in that other world, moving and working among the children without any evident compassion. Ethran children, Earthborn children—not their own kind. Of all the things that Behl has ever seen fit to show me, that was by far the hardest to bear.”
Lucky, directed by something inside which simply knew what to do, moved to the slab with the other unknown being, sat beside its still form on the slab, and folded back the blanket. He felt, rather than saw or heard, Thurlock’s and Han’s gasps of surprise—or more likely shock. Lucky understood the reaction, for the being lying before him was not only a strangely misshapen memory of a humanoid form, it almost couldn’t be seen. That is, the solid form seemed to be there one instant and not the next, and from moment to moment the shape seemed to shift. Near the apex, what Lucky perceived to be the creature’s head seemed at times to hold the vestiges of a chubby-cheeked face much like a newborn infant’s, but this was no child. Again, Lucky knew that, and didn’t question how.
In the back of his mind, Lucky kept track of the other three people in the room as he reached out to put his hands, as much as he could, on the creature’s temples. Olana sat in her trance, just as she had before their shared instant. Han and Thurlock both stepped closer to him as if to stop him, but they weren’t fast enough, and Lucky made contact. The flesh he held seemed at first no more solid to the touch than it had looked, but as the light of Lucky’s magic—focused through the Key of Behliseth—and Ciarrah’s light flowed together into the small body, it took a more definite shape, if still not quite distinct and steady. In a moment, pink and green bars of mixed light began to glow in the center of the body, pulsing in the rhythm of a slow heartbeat.
Once again, Lucky began to see things that weren’t part of the world he was standing in. He was fully awake this time, though, and he supposed that if he tried, he could pull away. But he let it happen, and sensed another mind was pulling him into its memories. He saw a world full of life, vibrantly green, with flowing waters and shining stars. There were people in that world. At first they seemed human, but Lucky had a sense of time lapse, and over what must have been many, many years they began to change. Lucky’s vision shifted back outward to the great expanses of the world, and he saw the evidence of life begin to fade. Green land went slowly gray. Stars winked out. He understood; he was watching a world die. He heard a whisper.
“Terrathia.”
Then, Lucky began to speak in a waxing and waning whispered voice not his own.
“They are our only hope…. We were wrong, so wrong… our world fades… cannot sustain… not real and cannot last…. Not a place that can last! We are dying….” Lucky went quiet, but his rapport with this strange being remained. Did she have more to say?
Han’s shock seemed to give way and, apparently afraid for Lucky, he stepped over to him and took him by the shoulders, trying to pull him away. Lucky resisted, and the words came again, this time clearer, stronger, not to be denied.
“Evil came in our weakness. We are sorry! But the children, they are our only hope.”