Emily opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. She remembered the night when she and Celine had broken Michael out of Seven Skies; she remembered how she’d almost gotten all three of them killed. She hadn’t had a plan that night, not really, and it might have cost them all dearly. Hell, it had cost Celine.
But of course, Michael wasn’t referring to any of that. He was thinking of Derek—the person she was destined to become at another point in the endless cycle she found herself trapped inside.
“If he has managed to escape the mines, the guards, and the wraiths,” Michael went on, “you might be able to follow a trail he’s left, but only if he didn’t go back into Hellsgate. If he did, there won’t be any trail to follow at all. And it isn’t as though you have a lot of experience tracking.”
“I have to…”
“I know you have to,” he said sharply. “But you also have to think. Look, Der…Emily, I am pleased that you are going after Daniel. It proves that not everything we built in the fellowship has been lost. It lives on in you, just as it did in Derek. The wizard is focused on uniting the world, and I agree that that goal is vital as well, but not at the price of losing what made us special. I don’t remember all of the old tales. I don’t know how many of them were even true, but I know—I know—that there are things beyond the Haven that we must preserve.”
Michael’s voice was rising, and for a split second, Emily saw another man in her mind’s eye—a man in gilded armor, holding a bronze and silver sword aloft and rallying his men.
“If we are to unite the world, it must be to make a new one—a better one. One with honor and honesty and kindness. I will not exchange one tyrant for another.”
Suddenly, he was standing, and he’d pulled her up with him. They stood facing each other, and he was staring into her face with such intensity that Emily found herself wanting to look away but wholly unable to do so.
“I will not do it,” he repeated. His eyes flashed once more before the spell was broken, and they were suddenly just two dirty and tired kids, staring at one another in the dim light of a rocky cave.
Emily slipped her sword back into her belt and turned away.
“I don’t know of anything else I can do but go back to the mines to look for him,” she said. “If you have another idea, feel free to share.”
“Actually, I do.”
There was a sound behind them, and as one, they turned toward it, peering into the deeper recesses of the cave.
The wizard appeared from the gloom, moving slowly and almost silently toward them. It was impossible to see the expression on his dark features, but Emily could see stiffness in the line of his shoulders and dissatisfaction in the angle of his head.
He stopped a few paces away, examining them from the black depths of his hood. No one spoke for a long moment. Only the wind sang and the waves crashed and hissed against the shore outside.
“Have you come to your senses, then?” the wizard asked, bowing his head to Emily. His tone was entirely flat, and still she could sense the anger lurking behind the bland words, a panther waiting to pounce.
Emily started to reply, a sharp retort rising to her lips like the eruption of a volcano, but Michael cut across her.
“She has,” he said, and again his hand fell on her shoulder. He squeezed it firmly, and Emily knew enough to hold her tongue.
“She has?” the wizard echoed with the faintest note of relief.
“Indeed,” Michael said. “She’s going to do as her king commands, and her king commands her to do what she feels is right. We are nothing if we do not keep true to ourselves and the old ways.”
The silence that followed this pronouncement was almost palpable, and it stretched out for what seemed an age. The wizard was utterly still, and a chill rolled off of him as though he were carved from ice.
“I see,” he said at last.
“And now,” Michael went on, letting his hand drop from Emily’s shoulder, “there is much to do. Sit with me, both of you.”
Emily did not move. She went on staring at the wizard, who only returned her gaze with his own.
“Sit with me,” Michael repeated. Then, with a note of sardonic amusement in his voice he said, “Your king commands it.” Without waiting to see what they would do, he sank back onto his stone.
Emily was the first to move. Her issue was with the wizard, not Michael, and she wanted to make that perfectly clear. Wordlessly, she took her place to Michael’s right.
For another moment, it seemed as if the wizard would turn and disappear back into the cave, but then he too seated himself beside Michael, his cloak swishing about him like the quintessential old mage of a thousand stories. Emily hated that sound. She hated everything about him, from his cold condescension to the gray and white of his long flowing beard.
“Emily is going to fulfill the promise she made,” Michael told him. “She is honor-bound to do so, and she goes with my blessing, as do those who go with her. I am as indebted to this boy, Daniel, as much…no, more…than any of them. I won’t stand in their way.”
The wizard said nothing, only bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“I want you to use whatever means at your disposal to try to determine where the boy, Daniel, is now, and to aid them in their journey.”
“I will not be a party to these childish games,” the wizard snapped, breaking his silence.
“You will do what is needed or be dismissed.”
“Dismissed? And who will advise you then, my lord? You are merely a boy.”
“A boy whom you have declared king. You’ve insisted that the others must obey my commands, and yet you, yourself, seem particularly reluctant to do the same. If you want them to trust me, then it is time you set an example.”
The old man and the young stared daggers at one another for the space of a heartbeat, and Emily found her gaze moving helplessly back and forth between them, wondering who would blink. She was suddenly and intensely pleased that she’d helped Michael for reasons beyond the pity she’d felt for him when first she’d encountered him. She could see the boy, still in his worn and ragged clothes, coming to life before her eyes. He was strong and sure, and beneath all of it was a sense of goodness that she had not always been convinced was there.
“As you wish, sire,” the wizard spat, and he reached into his robes and produced the hunk of crystal Emily had brought him from the mines. That seemed a thousand years ago. Had it really only been a few days?
The wizard lifted it before his eyes, letting the meager sunlight that found its way into the cave dance on the surface of its one smooth side. Time became elastic, stretching out endlessly, until the tension in the air was more than Emily could bear, and mixing with it, like the heat of an open flame, was the wizard’s power.
It radiated from him in waves, bringing the world around them to life with a static electricity that crackled in her hair and burned her lungs with every breath she drew. The vibration in the stone beneath her intensified, until she could feel it in her bones and almost taste it, rank and sour, on her tongue. It reminded her of the knowing, only this power was raw, smothering, and seemingly without limit.
Stop it! Stop it! She wanted to cry, but she could not speak the words. The magic was all around her; it was creeping inside of her, working its way into her joints, her muscles, the very center of her being…
And then, all at once, it was gone.
A shiver racked Emily’s body as the cool, damp air of the cave seemed to crush in around her, obliterating the heat of an instant before. There was a snap in her ears and a sharp stinging that ran along the length of her body like an electric shock. She gasped, and tears blurred her vision, unbidden and completely disconnected from what she was feeling. She blinked them away, rubbing her face with the back of one hand.
The wizard turned toward them, and there was an arrogance in his manner that brought fresh warmth to Emily’s face. She felt Michael’s hand on her arm, and she gritted her teeth against
the angry words that wanted to pour from her.
“The boy is dead,” the wizard said dispassionately. “Crushed beneath a thousand tons of earth and stone.”
“No!” Emily said, and she was suddenly on her feet again, though she could not remember rising. One hand had fallen to the hilt of her sword. She looked down at the wizard, feeling fear and anger rising inside her in equal measure.
Rein it in, Em, she told herself, but that voice seemed far away and powerless.
“He is dead,” the wizard repeated.
“No,” she said again, a little softer this time. “He isn’t dead. I know he isn’t. I know.”
“You know nothing,” he said. “Your gift was never anything more than an illusion by my hand.”
Emily took a step back, stunned. That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be.
…A whole world to save…
…A whole world…
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered.
“Nor do I,” said Michael, and Emily looked down, surprised. In her anger she’d nearly forgotten him. His face was composed, but she could see tension in the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Give Emily the crystal,” he told the wizard.
“It’s dangerous. She can’t control it.”
“Control what? If she has no power, there is nothing for her to control, and no danger either.”
“She isn’t Derek, my lord, however much you may wish to have your old friend back. She will never be Derek…not in this life.”
“Give it to her.”
The wizard studied Michael for a long time, the piece of broken crystal cupped in his hands like a palmful of water made solid.
“Give it to ’er,” another voice echoed, and this time they all started at the sound.
Emily turned to find Celine standing just outside the cave, leaning on Corbbmacc’s arm. Her hair swirled about her face, white and gossamer in the wind that blew in off the enormous lake behind her. She was small and frail, but there was a strength behind her words that would brook no argument.
“Let ’er try. She’s got somethin’ inside ’er, same as me. Mayhap it ain’t the same as whatever yeh’ve got, but it never all came from yeh.”
The wizard didn’t move.
Celine made an impatient, disgusted sound. “Give ’er the bleedin’ thing already. Jaisus. She ain’t gonna break it.”
“Very well,” the wizard said at last, spitting out each syllable as if it was a bitter, poisonous pill. “Take it, Lance.” He held the crystal out to her.
Gingerly, Emily accepted it and lowered herself back onto her stone. The crystal felt warm in her hands, full of a power that frightened her deeply but also excited her.
She tilted it toward the light, watching the colors that refracted from its surface and the mists that swirled within its depths.
…You know nothing…
The wizard’s words reverberated inside her head, mixing and blending with the cries of the winds outside.
…Nothing more than an illusion…
…An illusion…
…Illusion…
Nothing was happening. She’d never really had the knowing, and now the illusion had been broken.
No, she thought. That can’t be true. It can’t.
She stared into the stone, willing herself to see something—anything. Nothing came. Only shapeless mist, and light, and color.
She felt a tiny hand on her arm, and she looked up to find Celine kneeling beside her. Her face was twisted in a grimace of discomfort from the effort, deepening the lines that marred her once pretty face.
The thought jarred something in her memory, and a handful of words floated back up to the surface of her mind.
“…I want to help you and the pretty one…”
Daniel’s voice. Husky and wild and yet containing the unmistakable timbre of a child.
Emily’s eyes filled with tears.
Daniel…who’d risked so much for her and “the pretty one”. What would he think of Celine now? Would he still find her pretty? What kind of world was this where souls as pure as Daniel’s and Celine’s were destined to be crushed? It wasn’t right.
Celine slid an arm around Emily’s shoulders, embracing the taller girl awkwardly. The gesture was meant to soothe, to comfort, and it broke down the dam. Emily buried her face against Celine’s shoulder and cried.
“S’ok, Em,” Celine murmured, stroking her hair with fingers prematurely twisted into claws by years they’d never seen. “Yeh can do it. Just relax. Think of him. Think of Daniel, and he’ll come to yeh. I know he will. That’s my knowing.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, her lips moving against Celine’s tunic.
“Yeh can, and yeh will.”
Celine pulled away from her, and Emily watched, a little hurt, as Celine slowly got back to her feet.
“Do it, Em.”
Slowly, Emily looked back down at the crystal in her hands. A tear ran down her nose, hung at its tip for a moment, then fell, landing with a diminutive splash upon the smooth surface of the stone.
The tiny bead of moisture slid away from her, following the angle of the crystal and leaving a glimmering trail in its wake that shone more brightly than the stone it christened.
She watched its progress—focused on its infinitesimal reality. It traversed the landscape of the crystal the way she traveled this world—small and lost. Its path divided the crystal in two, the way she was divided—caught between enemy lines, past and future, tangled promises, and forgotten lives.
She watched it reach the edge—watched it hang for an instant that seemed to stretch out into an eternity of eternities—and then it fell, and she was falling with it.
***
The winds are clawing at her. They tear at her clothes, at her hair, at her eyes. Their cold is biting, and their teeth are sharp. There is a roar in her ears that makes her head ache with the force of its brutality.
The mists roiling around her no longer seem inviting. They ripple and hiss as if they are boiling, but they are not. They are cold—so very cold—and hungry.
Terror fills her as she is buffeted this way and that. She opens her mouth to scream, but she cannot hear the sound over the thunder in her ears. Perhaps the sound was simply unable to escape, frozen solid in her throat.
Daniel, she thinks in a panic. Daniel. Where are you?
She is hurled forward, turning head over heels again and again in the maelstrom. Desperately, she closes her eyes, but it does not calm the uneasy beast that scrambles at the inside of her stomach, the dizziness in her head, or the terror that threatens to consume her from within.
Now there is pain—a stinging on every piece of exposed flesh. Skin that was numbed by the frigid winds begins to burn with tiny pinpricks of agony.
She opens her eyes. The mists are gone, replaced by a monstrous multitude of autumn leaves. They are red, and gold, and orange, and a thousand other pale shades for which she scarcely has names. They swirl around her, their sharp edges nipping at her face, hands, and legs. They cut into her flesh, and yet she does not bleed; there is only pain.
The world revolves, but there is no up or down…no east or west. Around her, the leaves swirl and dance, and as the pain begins to subside, they change; their beautiful colors darken…first to brown…then to black…until it seems she is surrounded by a thousand spades from a sick and twisted deck of cards.
She tumbles over again, and all at once, she is staring down at the ground from an unfathomable height. The suddenness of it is so shocking that for a moment, she feels nothing at all.
And then she screams, and this time, the scream fills the world.
As she begins to fall, some part of her mind, remembering why it is that she is here, registers the empty sweep of the land, the dark browns, blacks, and tans that comprise everything, the cacti that dot the endless dunes, and the small camp of wagons that are arranged in a circle just beneath her.
Bound, gagged, and tied
to the top of one of those wagons is a small, naked figure. His hair is matted and caked with blood that has dried long ago. A jagged yellow stump of bone protrudes from just above his left ear, the only sign that the spiraled horn above his right ever had a mate.
Daniel…oh, Daniel…
***
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I told you it was dangerous.”
“You said she had no power.”
Silence.
“Apparently, I was mistaken.”
She felt a strong arm around her shoulders, but she couldn’t open her eyes. The lids were too heavy, and her head was throbbing.
“Drink this.”
The rough edge of a clay cup was pressed to her lips, and with an effort, she parted them and let the cold, sweet water roll over her tongue.
Corbbmacc’s voice…Corbbmacc’s arm holding her up.
At last, she opened her eyes.
They were all there now, even Garrett, Mona, and the enigmatic Haake. They were all staring at her with wide, uneasy gazes.
“I told you he was dead,” the wizard said. Though his tone could not be described as kind, it had at least lost its edge of hostility.
Emily struggled to sit up straighter, pulling away from Corbbmacc to look directly into the wizard’s face.
“Liar,” she croaked, her voice sounding strange in her own ears. “He’s not dead.”
“Where is he, Em?” Celine asked. “Did yeh see? Could yeh tell at all?”
“Desert,” she whispered. She took the cup that Corbbmacc was still holding and drained it. The water felt divine on her parched and aching throat.
She lowered the cup and watched as Corbbmacc and Garrett exchanged a glance she couldn’t hope to read, but which was clearly full of meaning to them.
“What is it?” she asked, setting the empty cup down on the ground beside her. She was trembling, but the tremors were passing. More than anything, she wanted to sleep. She felt as though she’d just killed a five-minute major penalty all on her own. Every muscle ached, and her head throbbed dully.
Haven Divided (The Dragon's Brood Cycle Book 2) Page 5
