54
Over the days following the investiture, Joelle visited Hyam from time to time. Though she never actually woke from her breathless slumber, still she came to him in dreams. Also Hyam occasionally felt her peace invade his lonely hours. She remained with him for one silent heartbeat, and she departed. Hyam knew it was her way of reminding him that time passed, the world awaited, and he had tasks still undone.
His departure was far harder this time, for Hyam had no idea where his journey would take him, nor how long he would be gone. Even so, he left his forest haven ten days later. Hyam was accompanied by four trusted friends. Meda and Fareed had accepted his invitation with such joy it seemed as though they longed for nothing else. Shona was traveling with them only as far as Emporis. These days the newly crowned regent was always accompanied by Alembord, head of the palace guards. The fact that Shona wore no crown and had no palace of her own was of no importance to anyone.
Elven guards escorted them down the avenue of woven green. They emerged in the glade of desert pines across from the Emporis gates. Hyam stepped to the ledge and discovered a vast horde of spectral warriors filling the vale from end to end. He saluted their leaders and called out words in Milantian and Elven and the human tongue. “You failed at nothing. You held to your vows. You did all I asked and more. If it is in my power to release you from your unseen bonds, I do so now!”
Shona carried herself differently these days. She still wore the simplest of dresses. She refused all manner of adornment and carried nothing save the wand with its miniature orb. But more striking still was her solemnity. She seemed draped in a veil of all she could not yet behold, the threats and the danger and the challenges yet to come. It granted her a timeless grace.
Shona said, “The general replies as before. He says that for the moment, your desire is enough.”
The sun and the heat drenched them all. Hyam asked, “You will hunt the mage that the wizards of Alyss called master?”
“Already our scouts are searching for this one and the one who carried your mate’s breath,” Shona replied for them. “But they remain hidden.”
“Which suggests they possess an orb,” Hyam said.
“That is our thinking as well,” Shona said.
Hyam saluted the half-seen horde. “My vow still stands. I count it as a lifetime quest to free you all.”
The soldiers returned his salute, then drifted away, carried by winds none felt. When the vale was empty, Hyam turned back and said, “Emporis is not ready to greet you, Highness.”
Shona replied, “I wish you would not call me that.”
“Highness,” he repeated, “when you first arrive in this city, it must be formally announced, and it must have purpose.”
“More than saying farewell to the leader of my company?”
“Far more,” Hyam replied.
“Promise you will return as soon as you can.”
Hyam bowed in response. “The very hour my quest is complete.”
“Our quest,” she corrected, then hugged him. Her arms carried an uncommon potency, as though she shared her breath within her embrace.
Hyam started across the empty vale, accompanied only by Meda and Fareed. When they reached the Emporis gates, Hyam glanced back and found her still there, a lovely figure in palest grey, alone even when standing between Alembord and four Elven guards. Hyam bowed once more and turned away.
Selim and his three drovers were ready, and together they left Emporis that same evening. The caravan’s only cargos were food and water, for they intended to defy the season and elements both. Meda and Fareed kept well away, granting Hyam the space he had never asked for yet needed desperately. He might as well have traveled alone, for no one respected another’s solitude like a desert dweller.
They were slowed by a pair of storms, too minor to halt progress but most uncomfortable just the same. When the red hills of Lystra finally came into view, it seemed to Hyam as though they had traveled the yellow realm for years.
He approached the solitary hills with Selim, Meda, and Fareed. When they reached the base, Selim fretted, “You are determined to do this alone?”
“I must,” Hyam replied.
Fareed asked, “Sahib, forgive me, but have you tested to see whether your powers have returned?”
Hyam slipped from the camel and handed the reins to Meda. “You know I haven’t.”
Selim showed shock. “You don’t know whether the dragon’s potion healed you?”
“Not yet,” Hyam replied. “But soon.”
“Hyam, the witches will know this,” Meda said.
Fareed added, “And the dragon is not here, and the witches are no longer bound by its commands.”
Hyam started away. “I will be safe.”
When he was halfway up the hillside, he turned back long enough to wave his assurance. The dragon had asked Hyam not to mention how he was recuperating, or how they visited almost daily. Tragan appeared in a mirror’s surface, or a sword’s blade, or the sunlit reflection of standing water. They spoke briefly, in the manner of friends who knew what the other would say before the words were even formed. And the dragon agreed that this trek was important.
As he climbed, Hyam recalled another solitary walk, taken after laying his mother to rest. He had traversed the great forest to the Three Valleys Long Hall, where he had been informed of his secret heritage. Now Hyam scaled the arid peak and wondered at the meandering route that had taken him so far, only to deliver him here, alone upon a lifeless hilltop, staring into empty shadows. Filled with a determination so fierce he felt nothing save the force that yearned to be unleashed.
The hand moved on, writing the next line of the quest he now shared with a multitude of allies and friends. All he could see of the journey was the next step. From here they traveled on to Alyss, where Hyam would read all the remaining scrolls and commit the war-spells to memory. But before that, he had a solitary task that he knew must be fulfilled here. Alone.
The witches of Lystra had gone against the commands of their own kin. They had done so with the twisted motives of their kind, demanding payment, trying to entrap Hyam’s company, fearful and defiant and fierce. And yet they had helped him. And so he came here now, because their powers were going to prove invaluable. How, Hyam did not know. But he and Tragan were now convinced the time was coming. Hyam would soon call upon them and needed to be certain they would obey his command.
And so he stood, isolated by far more than the desert heat. There was no more fitting a place, Hyam knew, to reveal his new powers.
The dragon’s gift was now joined to Hyam’s despised heritage. What was to grow from this combination, Hyam had no idea. Only that it began here.
The forbidden tongue was made for this hill, for this moment. The Milantian language had been forged in the furnace of magic. Ages past, it had been intended to crystallize those abilities, when joined in the heart of Milantian mage.
His heart.
Hyam touched the center of his forehead and spoke the Elven word reveal. For the first time in over a thousand years, the language of a race destroyed by Milantians was spoken here. The light burned with a defiant supremacy.
Then he raised his hands and drew upon the sun.
The power surged and soared. He knew an instant of human guilt over his exultation and his raw joy. Then Hyam granted the Milantian component of his being full rein.
His outstretched arms melded the desert sun into a blinding arc, a river of light that he shot down the long central valley. The power illuminated every nook and shadow and fold.
Hyam saw the men caged in the central pillars shifting in their blissful sleep. He saw every witch cast awestruck looks his way. He saw the queen of Lystra fear for her crown and her domain.
Hyam lifted his gaze and stared into the ribbon of flame that joined him to the sun and the futility of time. Binding him to the quest and all the unknowns his days would soon reveal.
He looked back down the hidden realm. He knew the witches and their queen now understood that he held their future in his grasp. When he sensed they were truly terrified by his potential to destroy them, he released his bond to the sun.
The shadows returned, the hill resumed its timeless pose.
Then Hyam spoke a single word, one that carried the force of the power he now wielded. He caused the mountain and all its occupants to resonate in time to the future they shared. They had no choice. That was why Hyam had come. So they would understand that he had taken up the Ancients’ mantle. And claimed it as his own.
Hyam shouted, “Treaty!”