by Frank Morin
Below them, the shape of her partitions changed, sides sliding up and down as it morphed into a nineteen-sided crystalline shape. It was beautiful, and Connor sensed the answer lay in there somewhere.
“I still feel we need some kind of link between your affinityscapes, some kind of exit from one of your minds to the next,” he said.
“But we can’t punch holes in the walls. There are no other exits.”
“There is one!” Connor exclaimed as the idea gelled. “Come on.”
He tipped forward into a dive, willing himself back to her doorway. Seconds later they stepped back into her affinityscape. It looked the same, with the same practice yard in the shadow of the same tall peak, with the same islands and bridges in the mist.
Over a deep abyss.
Connor led Student Eighteen onto the bridge to pumice, but stopped halfway across and pointed down into the roiling, dark fog that obscured the abyss. “There is an opening.”
Student Eighteen looked over the edge apprehensively. “I don’t sense anything down there.”
Connor didn’t either, and honestly the idea that had seemed so brilliant floating safely above the construct now seemed ridiculous. But he didn’t have a better one, and in the mind, what one chose to believe could prove very powerful.
He placed a hand on her arm and said, “Concentrate. Imagine your partitions stacked on top of each other instead of side by side. Imagine your affinityscape positioned directly above the next one, and the one below that.”
Comprehension dawned and she smiled. “Connor, I’m impressed. You’d make a great mind killer.”
“As long as we don’t kill our own minds,” he said with a smile.
She concentrated for a moment, then nodded. “I’ve got it. We’re all lined up vertically.”
“Who is below yours?”
“Aifric.” She spoke confidently, but then added, “At least, that’s how I’m imagining it. I still don’t feel her.”
“She’s there,” he told her, forcing confidence into his own voice. She had to believe, or his plan would result in, well, something bad.
He glanced over the rail again, looking down into the softly billowing, dark mists and cast his own sensed down into them, but felt absolutely nothing. He’d wondered more than once what would happen if he accidentally plunged down into the abyss. Would he lose his mind, get lost forever in there, or break something important?
He was standing with Student Eighteen on her bridge in her mind while she was imagining the other partitions stacked below them. He trusted her completely and refused to believe something bad could happen to him inside of her head.
He wasn’t stupid, though. A long, coiled rope appeared on the bridge beside them, one end already fastened securely to the rail.
Student Eighteen looked from the rope to Connor as he swiftly tied it around his waist, using the knots he’d used his entire life in Alasdair to secure stones on the lift. “You can’t be serious.”
“This is the way,” he said with a wink. Then he jumped.
“Connor!” she cried, extending one hand toward him. That look of worry on her face did not fill him with confidence.
“Keep the image fixed,” he shouted back up at her as he dropped into the mist like a stone, with the rope playing out behind him. The mists felt cool and slightly moist to his skin, but when he tried tapping his elemental affinities to call upon air to slow his descent, he felt nothing. He wasn’t actually falling through air, but through a mental projection. It would be all right.
He repeated that to himself over and over, a litany against cold fear that made him clench his fists, and reminded himself that he wasn’t really plunging eternally in a bottomless abyss. He was tethered to the rope, and he could eventually climb back up if the attempt didn’t work.
Connor still couldn’t help tapping granite, just in case he hit a solid partition wall. He would have to hit something eventually. Maybe. In the depths of a mind, maybe not.
Not helping.
Then abruptly, Connor felt something far beneath him. Somehow through chert, he sensed Aifric. She was down there!
He started to smile. It was going to work.
The feeling of Aifric drew closer and closer as he plunged down, and he shouted back up to Student Eighteen, “Try slowing my fall.”
“What?” Her voice echoed back down a moment later from a great distance. The mists seemed to distort it and make it hard to understand.
Connor struck bottom.
One moment he was free falling, and the next he crashed down onto soft ground that thankfully gave beneath him, flexing with the impact. It was dark, so he couldn’t see much. He activated limestone, the light softly green. It turned the mists a sickly, unnerving color, but did help illuminate what he stood on.
It looked like the mists had congealed, like warm snow. He pressed against it, and although it gave under his touch, it didn’t part. It had to be the partition between their minds. It felt thin, but wasn’t broken.
Connor paced around, enjoying the springiness of the ground, pondering the best way to deal with the obstacle. Once through that thin barrier, he felt convinced he’d drop into Aifric’s affinityscape, but he hesitated to simply punch a hole through it.
The rope shook against his waist, and Student Eighteen appeared above him, sliding down the rope, hands protected by thick leather gloves. She dropped onto the solid ground, looking intrigued. “I felt the rope go slack and heard you shout something, but couldn’t make it out. What’s this?”
“I think it’s the partition with Aifric. I can sense her beneath us.”
She dropped to one knee, placing a hand on the spongy ground, and grinned. “I feel her too. The barrier is weak.”
“But it’s still there. I didn’t want to just bash through.”
“No, that would definitely cause damage, but what if we placed a trapdoor here?” she asked.
“How is that better than creating a door in the walls when you envisioned the partitions horizontally?” He liked the idea, but didn’t want to hurt her.
She frowned, considering the question for a moment. “Those walls are solid. They protect the integrity of our individual mind spaces, but this . . . This feels thin, like we’ve found a point of mutual contact through our affinities. I don’t feel danger here.”
“Are you sure you want to risk it? We don’t know it’ll work.”
“We don’t know it won’t, either.” She stood and met his gaze. “I’m used to treading new ground in my mind. No one else has managed what I have, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts. As much as I fear breaking holes between the walls, I don’t fear making a passage here.”
“I hope you’re right,” he told her. If something went wrong, what would happen to her? What would happen to him?
“Help me.” Student Eighteen crouched over the spongy ground, closed her eyes, and extended her hands. Connor knelt beside her and took her warm hands in his. He was already walking in her mind, but that contact strengthened their bond, and he sensed her focus without the need for words.
She was envisioning a trapdoor over a vertical shaft with a ladder leading down through the mist partition. Connor added his own will to the effort, just as he had when rebuilding Aifric’s partition.
The floor beneath them transformed, changing from translucent, solidified mist into amber light. He recognized it then as part of the partition between their minds, fashioned of willpower, chert, and their combined power stones, all woven together into a protective barrier.
Connor smiled. He loved discovering new things, and he sensed this was a special moment, a vision that perhaps no one else had ever seen.
With that interwoven barrier now visible, he saw how to pull aside the pattern and insert a new one, formed out of those same elements, but self-contained. It created a hole, but also sealed it and ensured the ongoing integrity of the barrier.
A trapdoor made out of pure gold formed beneath their feet with a handle shaped like
an upraised hand, open in greeting. Connor felt the pattern seal into place. He stood, filled with a sense of wonder.
“Amazing,” Student Eighteen breathed as she shuffled to the side and grasped the upraised hand handle and pulled. The trapdoor swung up silently on golden hinges, revealing a nineteen-sided shaft plunging down through the ground. A bright silver ladder led down, and the entire shaft glowed softly with a comforting, white light.
“Ladies first,” Connor said, giving her an elaborate bow, like the ones Kilian sometimes used.
Grinning with eager anticipation, she scrambled down the ladder. Connor followed, letting the trapdoor close behind him. Every nineteen rungs, the wall was marked with a bar of gold. After nineteen of those bars, the shaft ended in another trapdoor. Student Eighteen pulled it open and yelped as she plunged through, disappearing into billowing, dark mist.
“This had better work,” Connor said, releasing the ladder and dropping down through the trapdoor.
Again he fell through mists. This time he wasn’t tethered to a rope, but he didn’t feel afraid. He sensed Aifric’s gentle, caring presence all around. They’d entered her partition, and Aifric would never allow harm to befall either of them.
A moment later, he erupted from the mists and was shocked to see Aifric’s affinityscape spread around him.
It was upside down.
Or he was. The world spun as he somersaulted and somehow landed upright in the middle of Aifric’s bridge to granite.
Student Eighteen had already landed. Aifric was standing on the bridge, and the two women were laughing and jumping up and down on the bridge in such excitement the bridge started rocking wildly.
It worked!
Connor swept both girls off their feet in a great bear hug. Of course he then stumbled and almost pitched them all right over the side. It sort of wrecked the moment, but they didn’t seem to care.
Aifric led them back to her affinityscape mainland, which looked like the healing wing of the Carraig. Connor smiled as he scanned the rows of perfectly made beds marching down either side under the tall windows, ready for patients. He’d visited Aifric many times there, and memories of her care after getting pummeled by Catriona or beat up by Jok filled him with a sense of nostalgia.
If only those were still his only problems. At the time, they had felt larger than life, but compared to fighting the dread queen and leading tens of thousands of people into battle, they seemed so tiny. Now the Carraig was gone, blasted and buried, and all of their lives would soon be decided by deadly conflict. He was glad Aifric and all of her mind-sisters would be fighting by his side.
Aifric hugged him again, her smile wider than ever. “You did it! I feel the connection with Student Eighteen.”
“We did it together,” he said.
Student Eighteen added, “I feel it too. I sense no negative consequences from forming that link between us.”
“What are we waiting for?” Aifric laughed, grabbing Connor’s hand and yanking him toward the bridge. “Let’s go link to Isabell. She’s next.”
Riding that wave of euphoria from their initial success, Connor joined her on the bridge. Together he and Aifric dove over the rail.
Now that he knew what to do, it seemed to take only moments for Connor to complete the process of linking all of those partitions, allowing the ladies to move between each other’s affinityscapes.
When they finished, they all met in the common area, which once again transformed into a verdant field, surrounded by trees, with long banquet tables running down the middle. As the ladies all celebrated, Connor made a point of consuming ridiculous amounts of food. In that mental space, he didn’t actually have a stomach, so he couldn’t get full.
He finally awakened and found himself lying on his back in the pasture, blinking up at full night. At least a couple hours had passed, and he felt exhausted. Sitting up with a groan, he tapped a little sandstone to refresh himself. The night sky was clear, the air cool, with a faint scent of the nearby river.
Aifric jumped to her feet, spread her arms wide, and called forth a globe of water around her left hand. At the same time, crimson flames erupted around her right.
“Yes!” she exulted, laughing again.
Connor rose to his feet. He longed to go find Verena, but couldn’t help saying, “How about we test the limits of what you can do?
31
What Could Go Wrong with a Very Complicated Plan?
Early the next morning, just as Connor was sitting down to breakfast, Hamish dropped into the chair across from him. Dressed in his battle suit and chewing slowly on a jelly-filed pastry, it was obvious Hamish had already finished at least one meal.
“Take it to go,” Hamish said, gesturing over his shoulder. “Just got word from Verena. The entire command team is meeting in the big conference room. Final planning before we roll out.”
Connor took the tray and wolfed down his food while they walked. He wasn’t surprised. In the last report he’d heard, it sounded like the queen’s forces were making steady progress upriver, as expected. He felt a thrill of nervous excitement.
It was time to launch their assault.
The large conference room was located on the ground floor near the rear of the palace. It was a long room with a twenty-foot ceiling. The walls were clad in dark wood, with a few high, stained-glass windows allowing multi-colored light to stream into the room. The rest of the walls were covered with cloth banners and portraits of previous rulers of Shona’s house. A huge table occupied the center of the room, with forty chairs arranged in formation around it.
Most of the team was already gathered, with more arriving behind Connor and Hamish. Verena and Jean were already there, and they had saved seats. Connor took his place beside his sweetheart, and she promptly stole one of his last sweetbreads. He stole a kiss in return, and it was well worth the exchange.
The rest of their core team assembled, including Captain Ilse and Anton. As usual, Ivor, Shona, and Rory sat at the head of the table, and Rory called the meeting to order. “As you likely know, we’ve arrived at the day we’ve worked so hard to prepare for. Today we give the order to move out, unless our intelligence has changed.”
He glanced at Wolfram and Ilse. The two had been managing the intelligence-gathering efforts as well as the careful misdirection initiative against Craigroy. Ilse said, “Your intelligence is accurate, General. We believe we’ve succeeded in convincing the enemy that our morale is low and that we’re terrified by reports of the advancing army.”
Ivor said, “Thank you. Our mission is three-fold, and we must succeed in all three components to find victory. First is the vital need to separate the queen from her forces. Where do we stand there?”
Wolfram said, “We’ve carefully suggested through the captured speakstone that we are desperately hunting for ways to avoid open conflict, and that we’ve decided to send Kilian south around their forces to target the convergence point controlling soapstone.”
“Brilliant deception,” Verena whispered.
It was, but Connor still shivered at the thought of destroying more affinities.
Kilian said, “I’ll leave once the main forces roll out. I plan to circle wide to the east, past Connor’s new mountain, before I let my shields slip enough for her to sense my presence. Should confirm the report and draw her after me.”
“What are we calling Connor’s mountain, anyway?” Hamish asked.
“We haven’t given it an official name yet,” Shona said.
“I just think of it as Verena’s Trophy,” Connor said. That earned him one of Verena’s special smiles and a kiss on the cheek.
“That may not be the final name,” Shona said with a carefully neutral expression.
“We’ll worry about that later,” Kilian said. “Once I draw my mother out, we can simultaneously launch parts two and three of our plan.”
“Part two is us,” Connor said, gripping Verena’s hand in his, then looking to Evander.
The big
man said, “To hunt the great shark, one must first catch the irresistible meal.”
“Very well said,” Connor told him, happy the big man was making an effort to speak a little more plainly. “Once the queen is committed after Kilian, Evander and I will hit the convergence point where Sucker Punch is concealed and rouse the elfonnel sleeping there.”
Looking grave, Verena said, “I’ll station myself nearby to keep watch, just in case.”
“Once we destroy it, that should break fleshcrafting,” Connor added.
“No doubt my mother will feel the elfonnel rise,” Kilian warned. “You’ll have to act fast to finish it off. My mother can control elfonnel, so you may be able to do the same.”
“Really?” Connor asked. He loved that idea and imagined himself riding the great slumbering pedra elfonnel. If only they had time to try it.
“Most likely,” Kilian confirmed. “Especially when it first rises. It’ll be disoriented and unfocused for a moment. That’s the best time to strike.”
“We will destroy it,” Evander stated simply, and Connor felt optimistic. If he really could exert control over it, he couldn’t see how they wouldn’t succeed. Evander was one of the best elfonnel slayers in the world.
“Remember, my mother will still have access to fleshcrafting for a time until she exhausts the power already imbued within her sandstone,” Kilian warned.
“We’ll make her use it,” Connor promised. Hopefully they’d hurt her more than she hurt them, or he’d run out first.
“I’ll return to assist you as soon as she takes the bait,” Kilian promised, and that helped ease some of Connor’s nervousness.
“If things go badly, I’ll make the play to trick her into tapping an activated sculpted stone,” Verena added. That would be tricky to accomplish and would put her at terrible risk, but it was good to know they had a solid backup plan.
“May the Tallan smile upon your efforts,” Wolfram said. The table was somber as everyone considered the difficult task that Connor and his tiny team faced. If they failed, not only would they likely die, but they’d leave the rest of their friends and the entire army helpless before the queen’s wrath.
