She had prepared herself as best she could for this entirely new world. Her mystic endurance was such that she was quite certain she could maintain her human appearance for as long as was needed. She was quite accustomed to cold temperatures. Compared to the iciness of the northern stretches of the Crescent Sea, the snowy forest was nothing to worry about. But she wasn’t ready for the odd bit of anxiety she felt, knowing she had never been so far from water, and would only be getting farther.
Fortunately, that anxiety was nothing compared to the giddy thrill of exploring a new world and having a task beyond academics to pursue. She shut her eyes and let her mind drink in this glorious new landscape. Behind, there was the strange, obfuscating haze that had shielded Entwell from the rest of the world. To the west, north, and south, the world opened out with dizzying, endless detail. But one thing stood out more than anything else. A small point of piercing light a stone’s throw from where she now stood. She opened her eyes and turned to where the point had been. A dusting of snow had painted the forest a fresh shade of white. She brushed at some of the snow at the base of the sign Ayna had rested upon. Beneath it was a cloth sack. A stiff bit of parchment, seemingly unaffected by the snow, bore a simple message written in a shaky hand.
To be delivered to Queen Myranda Celeste. Not to be opened by any hands but the queen’s.
She shut her eyes again. The reason the bundle had been so bright in her mind’s eye was a potent enchantment layered over it. The spell had the unmistakable signature of Deacon’s handiwork, though with a shade less precision than she knew him to be capable of. Even if the label hadn’t warned against it, Calypso wouldn’t have attempted to open the bundle. The spell would prevent it.
“I don’t like that you’ve left something for someone else to deliver, Deacon,” Calypso said, tucking the package away. “It implies you wouldn’t make it back to her, or you couldn’t face her. But she’ll get it. That I promise. And at least I know you’re alive.”
#
Myranda stood beside the mirror in the vault, palm against its polished surface while her other clutched one of Deacon’s transcribed spell books. Ivy was still trapped within the mirror. She was slumped against the polished surface as though it were a sheet of glass. The creature didn’t appear to be hurt, merely in an exhausted sleep. The reason for her exhaustion was clear. While the reflection she was trapped in had clearly once been a replica of the vault, now it was a charred, shattered ruin. Ivy must have lost control. As horrid as it was to find her trapped in this way, it was also a mercy. If she’d transformed in the true vault, it would have been an incalculable loss to the kingdom.
The queen finished casting the spell. Ripples spread across the surface of the mirror and Ivy slipped through. The sudden motion stirred her, and after a snort of confusion, she realized she was free and scrambled from the mirror. The polished silver calmed behind her and once again reflected the contents of the room.
“Myranda. Myranda, he was here!” Ivy said, eyes still bleary from her exhaustion.
“Who? Who was here? Who did this to you?” Myranda said.
“Deacon! He was just here.” She wrapped Myranda in a tight embrace. “Thank goodness you found me. I was afraid I would be trapped here in the vault for who knows how long.”
“The door was wide open. The first person to happen by raised the alarm and sent for me to investigate. Did you say Deacon was here?”
“Yes. It… it was him. Physically it was him. It smelled like him, and it sounded like him. It even acted like him, a little. But I don’t know how it could really be him. He stole the Sword of the Chosen. I tried to stop him, and he trapped me there.” She wiped her eyes. “How long has it been? When did I last leave you?”
“A few hours, at least.”
“Then he could be anywhere… Myranda, he’s in trouble. He is trouble right now. He didn’t have his crown or his ring. His hand was crazy. And he… he didn’t look like he could think straight. Worse, it seemed like whatever was wrong with his mind was something he wanted. He was talking about a fresh perspective or something, and how the risk was worth it, because of some truth he was seeking.”
Ivy grabbed Myranda by the shoulders, a flare of blue surging as a new thought seized her. “Is Leo all right?”
“He’s fine. Ivy, are you certain about all this?”
“I don’t want it to be true, but I saw it with my own eyes.”
Myranda surveyed the room again. The spells protecting this place were as near to impenetrable as they could manage, and they’d been entirely unraveled when she’d arrived. There were perhaps three wizards in the three kingdoms who could have dispelled them, and Myranda and Deacon were two of them. Nothing but the sword had been taken.
“We’ve got to find him,” Ivy urged. “He’s not totally gone. He could have fought harder and he didn’t. You saw what he did to me. He didn’t want me dead. He just wanted me out of the way. Whatever happened to him, Deacon is still Deacon. If we find him, maybe we can stop it before something worse happens to him.”
Myranda shut her eyes and focused her mind. As she had so many times before, she spread her mind far and wide. She always seemed to be searching for someone, something. Today, at least, she didn’t need to hide from anything. She could freely peer into the world around her. There was no sign of Deacon, but she could feel other things. Terrifying things.
She opened her eyes. “Ivy, did you see how he arrived? Did you see how he left?”
“No. He was just here, and I was already trapped when he left. Why?”
“I can feel the residue of a D’Karon portal.”
Ivy’s expression sharpened. “They’re back…”
“We don’t know anything yet.” Myranda turned to one of the handful of servants who had anxiously watched as she rescued Ivy from her impossible predicament. “Go to my quarters and fetch my casting staff. I need to investigate this further.”
Myranda marched into the hallway as her staff person hurried to comply.
“What are we going to do if it is the D’Karon?” Ivy said.
“If it is, then we will do whatever we must. But we mustn’t jump to conclusions. We have enough to worry about without adding imagined dangers on top of everything else.”
“I need to get my blades. I need to have them ready. And I need…” Ivy’s ears perked up and pivoted toward the nearest window. “Ether is back.”
By the time Ivy was through talking, the whistling gale of Ether’s approach was loud enough for Myranda to hear as well. Shutters burst open, drapes tore from the window far at the end of the hallway. The swirling form of Ether tightened into her human form and dropped down in front of Myranda. The look on her face was intense and spoke volumes.
“You’ve found something as well,” Myranda said simply. “Very well. Follow me. It seems we have much to discuss.”
#
Ether had been as terse as she could manage in relaying her findings, but the words had still struck Ivy nearly as hard as the experience had struck the shapeshifter.
“He was there… you saw him,” Ivy said.
“An echo of the past, but it was him,” Ether repeated.
“I wish I could have seen him…” she said. “Even if he wasn’t real. I have so many memories of him, but I still worry they will fade. Just to see him once more.”
Ether shut her eyes. “Do not wish for it. It is a fresh pain in an old wound. A reminder of loss.”
“Even so. I’d rather one last sharp memory than nothing at all.”
Myranda marched onward, leading the others toward her chambers. Her casting staff was in hand now. She was not immune to the pain Ether and Ivy were enduring. The knowledge that these disturbances could give her a glimpse of things long thought lost, that it could confront them with friends and foes from the past, was a revelation both terrible and wonderful. But she shoved the possibilities and consequences aside. There was simply too much to do to allow hersel
f to be distracted. Better to focus on the facts and the clues.
“Where are we going?” Ivy asked.
“Deacon’s study.”
“The big one in your room, or the secret one in the wall?”
“You found the one in the wall?”
“Leo led us there. We spent a lot of time there while you were gone. I hope that wasn’t bad.”
“No. No. It was never meant to be a secret,” Myranda said. “It was only meant to be somewhere that he could work in privacy if he desired. And I granted him that privacy, as he would for me.”
“Not Ether,” Ivy pointed out. “She was reading his notes. At least all I read were his memoirs, and I’m in them, so that doesn’t count.”
Myranda gave the shapeshifter a look. “You read from Deacon’s notes?” she said.
“They were not secured in any way. It was hardly an invasion of privacy,” Ether said.
“They were in a room that could only be opened from the outside by Deacon, myself, and our son.”
“And your son opened the door,” she said.
“Setting aside the impropriety, did you find anything that might indicate something like this was happening?”
“My readings were not comprehensive, but there was certainly evidence of unstable thinking. He was speculating about the very makeup of our world, things that were lunacy to consider.”
“I’ll have to read them for myself.”
The group reached the same dead end that had been so useful for keeping Leo amused in Myranda’s absence. She pushed the gateway open and stepped inside.
“Show me,” she said. “Which books hold the writings that concerned you?”
Ether plucked the pile of notes from their place and spread them out before Myranda. She scanned the pages, and as she did, she felt a creeping, sour feeling in her chest. The words of each sheaf began as she had come to expect Deacon’s notes. Wordy and complex but brimming with enthusiasm. Often they would reference things on the previous page, tackling them like some sort of riddle despite the fact that he had clearly written them himself. Then, sometimes after a few sentences, sometimes after several pages, there would come a single word. “Alone.”
The writings that followed that word became increasingly erratic. They were less like a brilliant wizard working at the mysteries of magic and more like an outsider proposing answers to questions no one asked. They weren’t dangerous, they weren’t ravings. They walked step by step away from the way Myranda knew things to be and closer to some strange, half-demented musing of the way things might be. And each time a new sheaf began, the words of the Deacon she knew were more convinced of the merit of the madness that concluded the previous page.
“Alone…” Myranda said. “Whatever was causing this, he wouldn’t allow it to occur unless he was alone.” She looked to the corner of the room, where the little nest of blankets Ivy had fashioned was still curled up. “He wouldn’t do it while Leo was with him.”
“He didn’t have the ring and crown on,” Ivy said. “Maybe taking them off makes him… different?”
“The affliction was in his hand. It was growing worse, but it was only ever a physical thing.”
“Then why would he choose a crown for further treatment, rather than a second ring?” Ether said.
“He needed more material to enchant,” Myranda said. “We’d even tried it as a second ring, but it did very little good.”
“Then why not a bracelet or a bracer? He chose to put the new treatment on his head,” Ether said. “Read this page and tell me if these are the words of a sound mind.”
Myranda returned her gaze to the page.
“‘Earth, fire, wind, water. The mystical elements. Alchemical fundamentals. These are the basis for all else. Or so we have come to believe. There are clearly things beyond. Pure white magic. Pure black. The gray magics. My specialty. There must be fundamental magics deeper. Mana? Perhaps, but that is less an element and more a force. There are many forces. But what lies beneath the other elements? Earth, fire, wind, water. They make up our surroundings, our bodies. Everything. But they are the colors of the canvas. What is the canvas?’”
She turned the page.
“‘What exists in the absence of those things? Time exists. A force? Space exists. A substance? Connected, as with air and fire. One feeds another. Truth exists. Are these the deeper elements? Abstract to the mind? Must they be abstract? Are things possible because they exist within these elements? Can they be rendered impossible if they do not? Do not lock the door. Remove the door. Is this the way? But how?’”
Myranda gazed at the area below. Complex sigils were traced out in groups, variations of the same shape, like he was trying to work out which was the correct one.
“It doesn’t sound any more confusing than Deacon usually sounds,” Ivy said.
“He is suggesting that things like truth are fundamental forces that shape our world,” Ether said.
“He is suggesting that time is something that may be able to be manipulated with magic in the same way that fire and wind are,” Myranda said. “This is why you were concerned. We are seeing disturbances in time, and we’re seeing Deacon musing about the malleability of time. So you suppose Deacon is responsible for these disturbances.”
“He is musing about the nature of time, and time is rebelling against us. Why search further for a cause?”
Myranda drummed her fingers on the desk. “It would surely take an enormous amount of magical power to achieve an effect like this. I would have noticed if he had been experimenting, and he wasn’t.”
“Maybe he didn’t do it, but he already will do it,” Ivy said. “He… will have done it? He already did it, but not yet? I’m not sure how to say it.”
“No, I understand,” Myranda said.
“You do?” Ivy said with a cock of her head.
“If you throw a stone in a lake, the ripples will reached the shore even though that isn’t where the stone landed. We could be seeing the ripples through time of something that will happen.”
“Yes!” Ivy said. “That’s what I mean.”
“But he doesn’t seem to have made any progress toward something like that,” she said. “Through all of these pages ‘No effect. No effect. This may be beyond the grasp of known magics.’”
“But if anyone could figure it out, it’s Deacon,” Ivy said.
“It may be folly to ask it, because logic is seldom necessary for a lunatic, but what possible reason would he have for toying with the past?” Ether said.
“If you don’t know the answer to that, you haven’t been paying attention,” Ivy said. “There’s a lot of things in the past that could use changing.”
“He can’t change the past and he knows it. He taught me that. The past is what got us here. It isn’t a bridge that we can cross and cut down behind us. It’s a tree we’re perched in the branches of. Try to make a change and it all comes tumbling down,” Myranda said.
“… You’re good at explaining things,” Ivy said.
“I attacked one of the creatures from one of the time echoes. I certainly didn’t do so in the first instance of that moment, and nothing changed. Not my memory, not even the surface of the lake. It shattered just as it had when the beast was still whole. If he imagines he can change the past, he is wrong,” Ether said.
“There is no sense speculating on what he is trying to do. His mind clearly isn’t where it should be. What we need to figure out is how he intends to do it, how we can stop him, and how we can set his mind straight again. Now both of you, help me go through this. All of it. We need to know why he needed the Sword of the Chosen. We need to learn the source of the D’Karon portals. Everything. From this point, we don’t dismiss anything. It could all be part of the same thing. And we need to get to the bottom of it.”
Myranda took a breath. When she spoke again, her voice had an edge to it, and she avoided looking her friends in the eyes.
�
��And what we’ve speculated here… that Deacon is doing this? It doesn’t leave this room.”
“If Deacon is a threat, others should be warned,” Ether said.
“I won’t see this world turn against Deacon until we are certain of what he’s done and that we cannot stop him ourselves,” Myranda said. “He is still my husband. He is still our ally. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.”
Ether grasped Myranda’s shoulder and turned her to him. “Myranda, we have a duty to this world, not to Deacon. If circumstance warrant it, are you willing to do what it takes to stop this?”
She shot Ether a sharp look. “We’ve fought beside each other often enough for you to know better than to ask me that question. This will be stopped.”
“But… if the time echoes are happening, then doesn’t that mean we don’t stop him?” Ivy said.
Myranda slapped down another sheaf of notes. “I intend to find out.”
#
Desmeres paced to the southernmost edge of Entwell. Beyond Warrior’s Side, the mountains curved back to claim the stretch of level land that held the village. It was a rocky place, too narrow and precarious to be used for sparring or to build a place to live. A use had been found for it, nonetheless. This was where the people of Entwell honored their dead.
He walked past the urns holding the ashes of those who had fallen. Each was set into an alcove carved into the wall. A small plaque had been affixed with care to the space below the urn, proclaiming the name, the family, and the accomplishments of each. There was no separation between the apprentices or the masters. Those who served for a century, teaching others and building the works of Entwell were side by side with those who had fallen to the cave but were brought through by the other members of their party.
That there were so few urns here, despite more than four hundred years of history, spoke of just how few had made it to this place, and how many of them were of a race so long-lived that they still remained. As he reviewed them and shivered against the cold wind from the sea, Desmeres swept his eyes over the names. He recognized many of them. Most of his life, by a wide margin, had been spent traveling the north. He was perpetually in motion, never anywhere long enough to make friends. All were associates, people he had found. People with whom he had struck deals and made alliances. But he’d spent his first thirty years in Entwell. He had memories of these people. And so many of them were gone. He found his mother’s urn first.
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