by Holly Lisle
He might lose.
Eggs and Bones, he might lose.
He grinned, his hide tingling, and spread his talons. He bowed toward the village, tucking his head between his forelegs and spreading his wings to their full extension, and he saluted the warrior who waited as if they faced each other on the killing field. In thousands of years, he had ever done his prey the honor of salute.
Then he snapped his head up, crouched for launch, and whispered into the wind, "I'm coming."
Baanraak leapt into the air, caught it beneath his wings, and flung himself up into the sky. The crisp night air smelled of damp earth and growing things awaiting the return of the sun. The moon's thin scythe sliced through the purple haze of twilight, near to dropping off the horizon behind the sun. Stars already glared down, casting faint shadows from the clear heavens. He lifted himself above the wall and looked over, into the still-busy village. It had its quiet spots, however, and he found one of them—a square of cleared earth behind the public stables big enough to afford him a comfortable landing space. He circled once to be sure, then dropped to the ground, making no noise and disturbing nothing. Then, for the first time in hundreds of years, he cast the spell that changed his form. He twisted, muscles bunching and condensing and bones melting and sliding, wings absorbing into spine, spine straightening and stiffening. It took a bit of time and the pain forced tears to his eyes and caught in his newly reshaped rib cage so fiercely that he almost couldn't breathe. But when the spell had worked its magic on him, he looked much like a veyâr, the tags of his wings moving behind him disguised as a cloak, and he could walk through the village. When people looked at him, they would believe they knew him.
He knew how he wanted to go after her this first time. He would be delighted with a fast, clean kill; if he got it, he'd feel that he'd earned it. If she proved better than his best, however, he would be prepared for that. He would get her.
Baanraak practiced walking, just to get used to having only two feet to propel himself forward. It had been a while, and he'd forgotten the limitations of a flightless, bipedal existence. He checked his hands, flexing the fingertips to be sure the retractable claws worked. Veyâr didn't have claws, but he'd done away with wings, tail, and teeth, and Baanraak had no intention of leaving himself without his favorite weapon.
When he was sure he had the locomotion issue taken care of, he strolled out to the cobblestone street and looked down its narrow, crooked length toward Copper House. He could see only the upper spires and towers from this vantage point, but he didn't need to see even that. He knew where he was, and he knew where she was. The time had come. He headed for Copper House.
At the gate, he presented himself. The guards looked at him, said, "Good evening, Captain," and stepped aside with a salute to let him pass. He waited while the guard before the inner door opened it for him. Then he walked into Copper House itself, and as he crossed the transom, he felt the weight of the copper cutting through the magical energy of the worldchain. He had no magic to call on anymore. He could not cast fresh spells, he could not fade himself to invisibility, he could not use the arsenal of magical weapons he'd preferred for assassinations for thousands of years. He had his claws, and his mind, and his innate ability to feel the pull of the one creature in all this place that was like himself. He could hear her thoughts, but that was because just before he entered Copper House he tore down the wall of silence he'd built between them. He moved quickly but casually to one of the side corridors of the vast building, closed his eyes, and listened.
At that moment she was otherwise engaged; she was reading something, and her focus was on the words, and not on him. Then he had not alerted her to his presence this time—at least not yet.
Good.
He set off in her direction, following the faint spoor of her oddly quiet thoughts.
The Gray Plains, and the Afterlife
Lauren faced the Administrator with her heart pounding in her throat. "Let me talk with them."
"You will regret it if I do."
"Regret how?" Lauren asked, because the Administrator's voice took on a low, hollow note as he voiced his warning.
"There is no knowing. But when lost loved ones see each other here, there are no happy endings."
"My son is not lost, is not dead. I want him back. And I'll take my chances with Molly and Brian."
"Molly first, then—she means less to you and may therefore do you a lesser hurt, and you may yet leave intact."
"You really have no clue, do you? Jake first."
"Molly first, or no one at all."
"Fine, then. Bring her on."
The Administrator said, "When you need me, call. Until then, I have no wish to be present for what is to pass." He vanished in a pale flicker of light.
Lauren stood alone on the plain again. She turned in circles, expecting Molly to appear out of the air as the Administrator had. Instead, however, nothing happened. She waited, watching the road in both directions, afraid to walk or move, afraid that Molly would not be able to find her if she did.
Time passed, and nothing happened. The featureless gray plain remained unmarked except for the road, and on the road nothing moved.
"Hey!" Lauren yelled. "Where is she?"
"You expect her to drop everything and come to you? She will reach you when she reaches you."
Son of a bitch, Lauren thought. "Why don't you let me go to her?"
"You cannot pass through the gates to that which lies beyond. You are alive—there is no place for you among the dead."
"I have a kid waiting for me. My place is with him, no matter where that is."
She waited for the Administrator's voice to remind her that she could leave immediately and save everyone a lot of inconvenience, but he didn't say anything.
"Look," she said, "Orpheus got to go in. According to the myth, he stood in there surrounded by the dead, and in front of Pluto and Proserpine sang about his grief until they let him take Eurydice home."
"And you know how badly that ended."
"He got to go in."
"He charmed the heavens with his singing. Do you sing?"
"Everyone sings," Lauren said darkly. "I can't charm the heavens with mine, but I can sure as hell kill crows. Tell you what. If you let me in, I won't sing. You'll be happy, I'll be happy…"
Lauren heard the deep, exasperated sigh. "Saying that you have been warned repeatedly, and that I wash my hands of all that befalls you from this point forward, I hereby summon the gate that will take you to your sister Molly, and that will, when you have spoken to her, take you either to Brian and your son, or transport you home. It will also transport you home now should you tell it to." A pause, and then a muttered, "Not that you will."
An arch clicked into existence in front of her. One instant it wasn't there, the next it was—solid stone, a pale bluish white with gold veining that transmuted the bleak light of the gray realm into something wondrous.
Beyond, Lauren saw a meadow, waist-high in flowers, and sunlight streaming down through white, fluffy clouds. She saw people moving up and down paths, and charming little houses, and the edge of a beautiful lake. Looking through at that scene, she realized in all her time on Earth she had never seen a day as beautiful, colors as bright, or a place as welcoming. A voice whispered in her heart, "This is my true home, to which I have returned."
She stepped through the gate, and looked around for Molly.
A woman older than Molly at her death, though still younger than Lauren, with a pre-Raphaelite tumble of black curls down to her knees, said, "I would have come."
Lauren stared at her. This was not the Molly she had expected, but in the eyes and the voice, something of Molly remained nonetheless. "I know you would have. I'm on the clock. Jake is here. He isn't supposed to be, but the Administrator told me I won't be able to take him home. I have to get him, but I had to talk to you first."
Molly's beatific smile seemed wrong for the situation. "If he's here, he belongs here. Eve
rything is better here, Lauren. You couldn't really hope to take him back to…all of that. How grim."
"I'm here. And I certainly don't belong."
A tiny frown knit Molly's brow. "And yet you talked your way in. You must have been persuasive."
"Just very persistent," Lauren said.
Molly looked into the distance and smiled at something Lauren couldn't see. Then she said, "So—you have come such a great way and through such obstacles to get Jake. And yet you're here with me. Why?"
"I want you to come back with me. I need you. Seolar needs you. And…Molly needs you."
Molly's smile grew puzzled. "You need me…I could see that. We had much we hoped to do. And Seolar—that's sad, but his life is not yet done. He'll join me here soon enough. But…Molly needs me? I'm here, Lauren. There is no Molly McColl in that universe anymore."
Lauren sighed. "It's complicated, but there is. You're—she's—damn. I don't know how much you remember."
"Everything from the moment I took my first breath until the moment I took my last. For that life and a handful of others."
"That helps," Lauren said. She wanted so much to ask questions, but it was not the time. "You recall the Vodi necklace."
"Yes."
"After you died saving Jake's life, some magic in the necklace brought you back, except without your soul. You remember your life, you have the same appearance, the same emotions, the same hopes and goals—but your body is there and your soul is here. I want to put them back together."
Now Molly looked disgusted. "That isn't me, Lauren. That thing might look like me, it might act like me, but it's not me, nor is it any part of me. It's nothing more than echoes I left behind poured into a monstrosity." She looked deep into Lauren's eyes and said, "That use of magic—to create dead things that mimic the form and personality of live people who died—is horrid."
"It wouldn't be horrid if you came back," Lauren said. "Then your soul would be in your body and everything would be all right."
"Climb into a cold, heavy, lightless crypt of flesh to live some uncounted number of years when I have earned my way free of that life? I did what I came to do. I lived that life to learn self-sacrifice, and at the end I did—but now I'm done. I have nothing else I have to do there."
Lauren stared at her. "The plan, Molly. Mom and Dad's…and your father's…plan. We're going to keep the worldchain from dying. We're going to bring the dead worlds back to life."
Molly was shaking her head. "Mom and our fathers didn't realize that worldchains die sometimes. If that one dies, souls will move on to others."
"I live in that one. Jake lives in that one. Everyone I know and love lives in that one. I don't want it to die."
"Of course you don't—but perhaps that is why you chose that life: to participate in the death of a world. From where I'm standing, I don't know what lessons you set yourself to learn. I only know that I'm not a part of them anymore. I'm done." She sat on the grass and patted a space in the flowers beside her. "Sit. Talk to me. Tell me why you could think that some dead thing was me, or why you would come here to help what you already know is a hideous perversion of the magic of the universe. Surely you must be confused, and I can help you."
Lauren stared at her. This place called to her, and Molly in her beautiful, radiant form seemed both reasonable and right. This was the place they would all eventually end up anyway. Why fight anything? Why struggle? Perhaps her lesson in life was to learn to give in gracefully; perhaps she was supposed to learn that fighting was futile. Jake was already here. Brian, too. She wanted to sit in the flowers. She wanted to talk to Molly. She wanted to listen to the music that floated in the air here, to breathe in the wonderful smells, to let go of the worry and the pain and the strife—because in the end, everyone did. They never finished everything; they simply packed up in midsentence and walked away with everything undone, and yet the world went on.
Or it didn't, and apparently that didn't matter, either.
She and Jake and Brian could stay here. She could miss the pain of living—because unlike the bleak gray plain, this place was a wonder; it was the sort of place where a soul could stretch out and recuperate and never feel a moment's anguish or a moment's worry. It banished sorrow. It soothed away fear.
And then she thought—Yes. And if Jake and I stay, that will be the same as killing him, won't it? And the same as killing myself. I'll be depriving both of us of our lives.
And what of Molly—the Molly back on Oria, willing to fight the fall of a universe even though this wonderful place is denied her? What of Molly, who deserved better than she was getting? No matter what Molly's soul, sitting here in comfort and safety, said, the Molly back on Oria was real. A real person. Worth helping—worth fighting with, worth fighting for.
Lauren didn't sit. The grass, the flowers, radiant Molly, the perfect day—these were not hers. She did not belong here.
It would be here when she got back, she told herself. Exactly the words she told Jake when making him walk away from a favorite toy at bedtime. "It will be there when you get back."
If she didn't go back and fight, though, her world—her home—wouldn't be there for Jake or anyone else.
She drew in a shuddery breath and said, "I think my job is not done yet, Molly. I think I have to go back and fight—I have to do what I can to save the worldchain."
"Without me, you can't," Molly said. "But I'm not going back—it isn't what I'm supposed to do."
"Maybe it's not what you're supposed to do," Lauren said. "But the part of you that's still back there—the person who still believes she's you—also believes that she and I are supposed to fight this fight, and she can't do it without me and win any more than I can do it without her."
Molly stared at Lauren, and for the second time a shadow disturbed that perfect countenance and that radiant joy. "If you consort with the walking dead, they will eventually turn on you and destroy you in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. You cannot conceive of the evil of the magic that has to have brought this thing into existence. No good can come of it."
"And yet," Lauren said, "I'm going to see if I can get some good out of it anyway." She took a step back toward the arch she'd stepped through and turned back to Molly. "Thank you for your time. I wish you were coming with me—but for her sake. Not for yours."
Molly's smile was once again that beatific, saintly smile. "Perhaps in this lifetime of yours, you're destined to make mistakes. I will not fight against your path any longer. I wish you good fortune."
"Yeah. Thanks," Lauren said.
Molly turned and started to walk away. She took normal-looking steps, but every step carried her away so quickly she seemed to be blown in a high wind. Lauren watched her until Molly blinked out behind a small copse; she seemed like a star suddenly hidden behind a cloud.
Lauren turned back to the arch. She dreaded the possibility that Brian might be as unmoved by the pending death of the world as Molly had been. She dreaded imagining that Jake might want to stay in this place instead of coming home with her.
Don't think. Just do, she told herself.
"I want to go to Brian and Jake," she said to the arch.
The Administrator said, "On your head be it."
She stepped through the arch. And Brian stood on the other side, and behind him, a joyous Jake came charging over to her and threw his arms around her legs and shrieked, "Mama!"—and Lauren realized that if she couldn't go back with Jake, she wasn't going back.
She picked Jake up and wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his hair, for a moment forgetting to breathe.
He tired of her embrace, though, and smiled at her and said, "I want down to play."
And she was left facing Brian. He was a little taller than he had been. A little leaner. The shape of his face had changed in some subtle way that she couldn't quite put her finger on, so that he was handsomer. But his eyes and his smile…she had seen them waking and sleeping, both before and after she lost him. And
until that moment, she had thought she would never see them again. She would have known him anywhere. He looked at her and smiled, and her eyes filled with tears and she tried to swallow around a throat suddenly constricted.
"Oh, Brian," she whispered.
He pulled her into her arms and kissed her, and her whole body sobbed, "Yes."
Yes. This was Brian—her Brian.
"How did you get to me?" he whispered in her ear. "Lauren, I missed you so much, and for so long. It was hell to be near you and to be unable to touch you." He brushed her hair back with a hand and kissed her again. "How did Jake get here? He wouldn't tell me."
"He figured out how to make a gate when we were in Oria." She frowned. Oria had come after Brian died. "Do you know about Oria here? About the worldchain?"
