by Frank Morin
“That’s very good,” Mistress Four commented after he got the new shields in place. “I’ve never felt a well-shielded mind that distracts me so well. Somehow I started thinking of breakfast.”
They went on to study techniques for pulling thoughts from other minds, and the time passed quickly. They lacked time to break out the full cooking gear for lunch, but Hamish unveiled a secret stash of cookies and sweetbreads. He warmed them on one of the little cockpit heater stoves, and somehow managed to make them taste like they were fresh from the oven.
Connor ate eleven.
Commander Six waved away the food, but the others all partook heartily, then chased the desserts down with smashpacked dinners from Schwinkendorf’s cookbook. The meal might not have rated really high on the last meals measurement scale, but for any other day, it was excellent.
By midafternoon, Hamish slowed and started their descent toward the split peaks of Badurach Pass. The mountain reminded Connor of the broken Jagdish peaks, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake leading them there.
Mistress Four saluted the peaks solemnly. “Thank you for bringing us here, Connor. This pass will always remind me of our home when it still stood proud against the evil that walks our world.”
So he decided he’d definitely chosen the spot on purpose.
“Where do you want to land?” Hamish asked.
The two plateaus on either side of the pass were still only occupied by small encampments, although some work was being done to prepare the Grandurian side for the arrival of the army. Long rows of earthen barracks and warehouses had been carefully raised. The area was still pretty unstable, so any work with slate had to be performed with agonizing slowness and delicate control.
Connor pointed to the peak. “Set us down on top.”
57
An Unexpected Friend
Connor jumped out of the Hawk as soon as Hamish touched down. The others followed, led by Commander Six, who exited with the frantic haste of a drowning man escaping the river. He dropped to his knees and touched the snow-covered stone, looking ecstatic to return to solid ground, even if it was the top of the high, narrow peak.
“Are you sure this is the best place to do this?” Hamish asked, grinning as he watched Commander Six.
Connor nodded, slowly turning a full circle to appreciate the panoramic view atop one side of the broken peak of Badurach Pass. The air was clear and cold, the sun bright. He smelled nothing but mountain breezes and a hint of snow. It was refreshing after the dust-filled ruin of Jagdish.
Mistress Four took in a deep breath. “I like it. Ascension should not be taken lightly, and I can think of few locations more appropriate than this.”
He grinned at Aifric. “I wouldn’t have thought of it if you hadn’t brought me here while trying to free my mind. Today I need to free a lot more than that.”
Hamish shrugged. “Works for me. If you get all fainty like you’ve done after the other thresholds and fall off the cliff, at least I’ll have time to catch you before you splatter on the rocks.”
Aifric rolled her eyes. “Do you have so little faith?”
Hamish grinned and offered her a smashpacked dessert, which she took. The other Mhortair soldiers climbed out of the Hawk and lined up for cubes of their own. Like Hamish always said, food diplomacy crossed all boundaries.
Kilian remained near the Hawk, leaning against one of the window supports, arms crossed and looking satisfied. “This should work. Let’s hope your connection is strong enough.”
“I’ll make it work,” Connor promised as he surveyed the wild landscape and the rugged Maclachlan mountains that inspired a sense of homecoming. The choice felt right, like the first cookie snatched from a still-warm tray.
On a whim he tapped the elements and they stepped into his mind without hesitation. Earth tapped his foot, glancing down at the majestic spire of the broken peak with a satisfied expression. The location also worked for Air. She flitted around, hands outstretched as she twirled, and seemed to be petting each of the eager currents that whistled around the peak.
Water looked content to see the mountains covered in snow, while Fire grinned as he considered the smoking vents in the plains below, broken open by the clashing of elements during the initial battles of Dougal’s invasion force. From that position, Connor could easily tap into any of the elements. It seemed a fitting choice to ascend with the fifth.
He extracted the sculpted stone dagger, gripped the hilt with both hands, and said to the expectant company, “Here we go.”
Hamish grunted. “As far as last words go, that was pretty weak.”
Connor chuckled, happy for a joke to help him avoid thinking about how nervous he felt. Ascending was hard enough without worrying about the fact that he was trying to ascend while accessing only half of the frequencies that usually fueled the power stone.
What would happen if the ascension failed? Kilian had said sometimes it was possible to sunder one’s affinities. According to Mhortair’s notes, failure to ascend with serpentinite would likely result in death. That would definitely ruin his plans.
He decided not to ask about it. Better not to know for sure. Usually he seemed to do better blundering into situations slightly clueless and having to come up with a response on the spur of the moment. He chose pumice and porphyry to maximize his connection to the green power frequency. Obsidian might be enough with pumice, but porphyry created the strongest link to the green, and he felt that the ascension was important enough to risk some of his dwindling supply of precious porphyry.
His friends watched expectantly, but the Mhortair were harder to read. He felt that Mistress Four was committed to the alliance, but wasn’t so sure about the others, particularly Commander Six. It would make him feel less nervous if they weren’t right there watching while he made the attempt, but he sensed that he’d offend them deeply by asking them to withdraw.
He decided to trust them. Even if they chose to betray him and revert to old habits of trying to murder Blood of the Tallan, he could count on Aifric, Kilian, and Hamish to watch his back.
So he took a deep breath, tapped the serpentinite sculpted dagger, and willed the connection wide open.
Sound thundered into him, so strong that his entire body shook. The haunting, jubilant melody of the Carraig gargoyles blasted through his mind, mixed with the sounds of distant thunderclaps and low murmurings, as if from thousands of excited voices.
As the connection deepened, Connor sought to unite with serpentinite as he had with soapstone and marble on his previous ascensions, deeply grateful that for once he was making the attempt in a calm moment instead of the middle of a battle.
His other senses began to fade. He barely felt his hands on the sculpted dagger, and the scent of the high mountains slipped from his mind. Even his vision and hearing contracted until all he saw were the lights of living sound radiating around him, and their murmur echoing in his ears.
In his other ascensions he had lifted off the ground, but now he couldn’t tell if he was still standing, or if he’d stumbled right over the edge. Billowing gray mist consumed the world around him, filled with brilliant flashes of light and sound. He could not tell if what he saw was happening only in his mind, or if it was filling the physical world. It didn’t really matter.
Connor drew deeper from the dagger until the sounds crashing through his mind overwhelmed all other thought. Only sound existed. The chorus swelled into a crescendo of blaring, crashing tones that made up an almost-melody that he struggled to understand. He watched, mesmerized, as the noise boiled around him in brilliant flashes of light.
Every piece of the song, every explosive report of thunder bounced around him in vibrant, rainbow colors. They reminded him of how light split into its various frequencies when he tapped quartzite to his eyes. He lacked the focus to wonder for more than a fraction of a second about how light and sound might be connected. He’d get back to it. Maybe.
Now all he could do was stare at the brill
iant cacophony in mesmerized wonder. The murmuring of voices seemed to creep along the ground near his feet, colored shades of red. Those sounds moved slower, with lower frequencies, but seemed able to continue rolling on far longer. Meanwhile, thunderclaps echoed back and forth, bright blues and violets that raced with abundant energy. The other sounds of the melody twisted together in oranges, yellows, and greens, all moving in individual harmony that formed a bedlam of sight and sound.
Connor extended his hands, feeling the sounds moving around him, and for each one he sensed their frequency and origin. As he touched each sound, it fused to him, becoming part of him. He could re-create any of them again whenever he willed it.
Cherished sounds from memories began pouring out through his ears to join the growing tumult, energizing the entire colorful cloud. Of course Verena’s laughter raced in endless loops around his head. His parents’ voices, the sound of his siblings laughing, and thousands of other sounds that he had absorbed and internalized over the years all poured forth and gathered around him in a thickening whirlwind of color and noise.
It should have created a cacophony of confusion, indistinguishable as individual sounds, but it didn’t. Connor heard everything, recalled with vivid clarity the memories associated with every one of those sounds. He grinned in wonder, hands extended as he slowly turned through the cloud of bright lights and re-lived all those memories.
The marvelous experience reminded him of that remarkable moment when all of his friends had united around him to fight the mind bomb. Each friend had carried with them precious memories like the ones he was experiencing again. Those memories, those sounds, had helped form him into who he was. They were integral parts of him, the pieces of his life and character that he had chosen to cling to. Now they wrapped around him, reinforcing his identity and infusing him with marvelous strength.
In that moment, Connor sensed the threshold, like a great, double doorway forming in front of him, filled with rainbow light and with every bit of laughter he had ever heard.
Connor eagerly stepped forward.
As he passed into the doorway, it was like plunging again into the invisible barrier of the Varvakin lightning energy. Only, this time the experience wasn’t nearly as much fun.
Connor gasped as his limbs shook, his arms shot out to either side, and his back arched in an agonizing spasm. The sounds that had rippled around him now plunged back into him, piercing him through every pore, like a million tiny darts burrowing into his skin.
He tried to scream, but the sounds refused to come forth. They boiled in his throat and plunged back down his gullet. He gagged as panic rose like a black cloud. He was drowning in sound and couldn’t spit them out.
More and more sounds pierced through his muscles, then deep into his bones. The pain eclipsed his ability to comprehend it, and for an unknowable amount of time Connor simply stood in the threshold shaking as the terrible sounds consumed him and welded to every fiber of his being.
He began to tremble as each piece of him vibrated at different frequencies, tuned to the various sounds consuming him. The shaking rattled him violently, and for a moment he feared he’d tear himself apart, each piece of bone or muscle dancing away from his corpse to a different tune.
His thoughts evaporated, his ability to understand what was happening vanished, and for a moment Connor was convinced he simply ceased to exist.
Only one thought rose through the tumult.
He was not going to make it. This threshold was going to kill him.
Connor lacked the ability to feel fear or regret, but as that single thought reverberated through him, he wanted to scream with denial. He couldn’t fail, couldn’t end like this. He refused to simply disintegrate.
But even though he threw every ounce of willpower, every bit of his hunger to live into the effort of stepping out the far side of the threshold, he couldn’t move.
He simply wasn’t strong enough.
Then a gentle hand slipped into his and pulled him the final step. Connor stumbled through the threshold and feeling returned in a flood.
Ow.
Connor groaned and for a moment regretted he’d taken that last step. He felt like Erich and Anika had beaten him with that tree for a year without letting him tap granite or porphyry first. Every tiny bit of him felt raw, as if he had exercised every particle of himself to exhaustion, then burned it for good measure.
The hand holding his pulled again, and he took another faltering step. Only then did he feel like maybe he’d live. He blinked a couple of times, tightening his grip on the warm hand holding his.
Hope blossomed. Somehow it had to be Verena. Had she realized where they were going, come to meet them in the Swift? He longed to see her and take her into his arms and thank her. She’d saved him again.
His eyes cleared. He once more stood in the billowing gray of the serpentinite world, with a single figure standing in front of him. It was not Verena.
It was Water.
She looked as real as anyone Connor had ever known. Her skin was warm, although he could feel the coolness of ocean currents rippling just under the surface. She brushed tendrils of hair from her face, and they flowed back around her head like retreating waves.
“Am I dead?” Connor asked. His voice was hoarse, his throat sore, and the effort of speaking made him cough.
Water placed a finger to his lips, and a trickle of cool liquid seeped through, eased the hurt, and settled his coughing.
She smiled again and spoke in a gentle voice like the murmur of low tide. “You’re not dead, Connor. We have waited longer than you can comprehend to greet one like you into our company. Welcome to the real world.”
58
Is It Bad When Imaginary Friends Talk Back?
Connor blinked in surprise. “Did you just talk to me?”
“Maybe you’re more dead than I thought,” she said, frowning and touching his forehead. Cool air gently stirred his hair, like a breeze flowing just over the surface of the Wick on a hot summer day. She was acting like a real person, not just an images he’d created to help him relate to his affinities.
“I’m a little muddled. My mind is hiding down in my feet, I think. You’ve never spoken to me before, although Verena told me you spoke to her in Merkland.”
She laughed, the sound like a bubbling brook. “After your first ascension we sensed the potential in you and we chose to manifest into your mind. We hoped it would encourage you to continue your journey.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you just an affinity?”
Water laughed again, but her eyes turned gray like the sea before a storm. “Your affinities allow you to connect with the tiniest part of who we are through your connection to the various frequencies of power. We are not defined by them, nor they defined by us, but we have discovered ways to walk together.”
Connor still felt sore, shaken to the roots by the brutal ascension. The appearance of Water as an intelligent being seemed too amazing to really believe. Had he actually failed and just not yet realized he was dead? Was he lying on his back, staring up at the sky with a broken mind? He wondered what Aifric would find when she ventured in there. Instead of Alasdair on a Sogail day, would she only see Alasdair buried under tons of rubble?
He decided he liked the idea that Water really was speaking with him. Death-by-ascension didn’t really fit his life strategy.
“This is kind of a lot to take in right now,” he managed.
“I believe you are finally one who we can help understand,” she said, her eyes changing to clear blue like Loch Sholto on a bright summer day.
Fire suddenly stepped through the billowing gray of the mindscape where they stood and spoke. He too looked more real than ever. He again wore his fancy, fiery doublet, his unruly hair shifting between shades of dancing flames. He laughed, and his voice was deeper than Connor expected. Instead of the childlike crackling of a cheery campfire, his voice was more like the deep rumbling of an inferno.
He cla
pped Connor on the shoulder, and in that brief contact Connor felt heat pouring off him that somehow did not hurt. “Well done, Connor. You’re the first who’s made it this far in a very long time. We’ve stoked the feeble little flame of yours with nothing but desperate hope that you would set the fuel ablaze. And now look at you. We finally have one who could become our champion.”
“I figured you’d sound crazier,” Connor admitted before he could catch himself.
Instead of flying into an explosive rage, Fire merely laughed. Connor asked, “Aren’t you really good friends with Kilian? You actually look a lot like him.”
Fire shrugged. “Kilian is a true brother of the flame, but if we tried to manifest through him like we hope to do with you, we’d crisp him to cinders.”
That was more than a little freaky. Kilian was powerful enough to fry Connor to tiny bits any day he chose to. If Fire and Water wanted to do something with him that they feared would destroy Kilian, he was pretty sure he didn’t want anything to do with it.
Earth rose up from the depths to Connor’s left. He towered over the rest of them, a huge man with shoulders twice as wide as Connor’s and hands the size of frying pans. He reminded Connor so much of Evander that he said, “And what about you? I thought Evander was your champion.”
Earth’s voice was gentler than Connor expected. He still radiated the same permanence as always, his thick, brown hair reminding Connor of freshly tilled earth, while his eyes now seemed far deeper and greener. Looking into them was like looking across the Maclachlan mountains in the height of summer, their peaks and valleys filled with a dense mixture of greens.
He said, “Evander is a friend, and we have walked together many times, but he has never responded to my call through these many years. I’m afraid he lacks the strength to step into our world.”
