by Tammy Salyer
“They see, yes. But not everything and everyone. They only see the fate of those in their own time, in Ærd’s time, because they are bound to Ærd until the timepaths between all the realms are remade.”
She thought back to the memory of her father explaining the time walkers to her. “Like trees, they should be able to branch to all the realms.”
He nodded again, vigorously. “Yes, yes. Like trees. When the realms were first created, the timepaths spanned among them all. Once, there was a time when every realm was connected, not by starpaths, which only leave a realm and enter a new one, but by time.”
She didn’t quite understand. “But it seems as if time flows the same in all the realms, even if they’re not connected. Wouldn’t that mean the timepaths aren’t broken? Maybe they still exist somehow?”
“Ah, good question. Time still flows within realms because it’s never been stopped.”
“Are you saying time can be stopped?”
“If one knows how. But if one did stop time, then the realms’ time would discontinue being in sync until the timepaths were reconnected. Did you notice how differently time passed in Ærd?”
She nodded.
“That is because a time walker is missing, the one your father took away. Time now moves slower there than here.”
Intrigued despite the press of their own concerns, she asked, “Do you know how to stop time?”
He looked at her so keenly that she worried for a moment she’d insulted him. But it was a valid question, wasn’t it? Finally, he sighed and went on. “If I did, My Evernal, seven hundred turns would not have passed in Himmingaze, with so much lost before it could be restored.”
He appeared to be so dejected about Himmingaze that she felt bad for asking the question.
Soon he went on, seeming to have gathered himself. “But the time walkers do. That is why the Wardens Temporalis were called such, you know. They always focused more on learning the secrets of time than they did on tending to Fimm. But then, Fimm was different before Ærd was lost, and didn’t need protectors. If only I’d been able to persuade them to tell me their secrets. I tried, I did, but they were resolute about hiding them. We are a destructive creature, you know. If just anyone could control time…”
After a moment where they both pondered this, Mylla turned the subject somewhat. “So then, what broke the timepaths?” It was the same question she’d had for her mother, though she didn’t remember ever getting the answer.
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “When a thing that was flawless in its completeness is fractured, inevitably the pieces that compose it are also flawed. One might say, corrupted. That is the corruption that now runs through all things created by the Five, who were once the flawless One. The corruption that runs through Balavad. ”
Of course it was Balavad’s doing. Isn’t everything?
“Do you know what the Fenestrii are, My Evernal?”
“Please, just call me Mylla. But, yes. They’re celestial stones gifted to the people of the five realms to help them protect the vessels.”
“That’s true, but also untrue.” He rummaged through the deep pockets in the heavy, tattered robe he wore over his strange Himmingazian costume and pulled out the Ærd Fenestros.
“Hey!” she said.
“You were sleeping,” he said simply. “What were you going to do with it while you were sleeping?”
Pursing her lips, she deferred. “Go on. What am I missing about the Fenestrii?”
“These”—he held the orb up to catch the firelight—“are the means to restore the timepaths. They are the… the seeds of time. Yes, that quite works. The seeds. If they grow again, they will create new timepaths from wherever they are, and then they will all connect again. The Ærden tessalopes will, how did you put it? Branch, yes. And then time will once more run unbroken through the fates of all.”
Funnily enough, this made an odd sort of sense. “Wait, tell me this. The tessalopes in Ærd knew my father’s fate because he is, was, Ærden. That means they know my fate, right?”
He blinked at her, eyebrows raised, saying nothing.
She went on, assuming she was on the right track. “So that means the tessalopes know if, and where, I’ll find the Scrylle. Wouldn’t it have just been easier to tell me that? And secondly, the one that started to change into a Fenestros before it could. Why did that happen to it?” Thinking about it anew infuriated her all over again.
“Ah, I suppose I should not be surprised that you know so little. You were young, weren’t you, when your parents took you from Ærd? And you are still young, so young.” Staring into the fire, he seemed to go off into his head for a bit the way he often did, and though she was getting used to it, her patience couldn’t stand for it this time.
“And?”
Without taking his eyes from the fire, he stirred the largest coals, then went on when he was ready. “When the Verities made time, including the future, they chose not to give their creations control of it, or the power to see into it. This is one of their laws, a natural order of things that none but the Verities may affect. When the timepaths were severed, the tessalopes came into being and were trapped in Ærd. Though they can still see what we simple mortals call fate, they must yet adhere to the Verity laws. That one who spoke to you of your father broke this constriction, and so fulfilled its own fate.”
“Its fate was to be reduced to a Fenestros?”
“Its fate was its fate. All the Fenestrii are merely timepaths waiting to sprout.”
“You know, Griggory,” she scoffed, “the more I learn about Verities and their ways, the less I like them.”
“Hmm, and how do you feel about stars?”
“What?”
“The stars. Do you like them much?”
“What… I don’t know, I don’t have any feelings about stars. They’re just shining rocks in the sky.”
“And Verities are just Verities. How we feel about them does not influence or change what they are. They aren’t people, Mylla. Remember that. They will never feel things the way you and I do. You waste your time when you love or hate them. And now you’ve seen that time is precious.”
She wanted to disagree with him, tell him his opinion was flirting with futility, but didn’t bother. He’d finally spoken to her about things she needed to know and that actually made sense. Mostly. She let the conversation lag for a bit as she thought it over.
The time walker told me Greven was still here, and it… was stopped. Which means telling me that was in some way influencing my future, or fate. Does that mean that it’s my fate to find him, or at least find out what happened to my father, then? And why?
Why indeed.
One thing was clear, she needed to learn what had become of her father and the Ærden artifacts. Yet she was beginning to think it had to do with more than merely stopping Balavad. She just didn’t know what.
Chapter Seventeen
Griggory slept for less time than Mylla had, and Halla’s rays were slanting through the broken ceiling when Mylla rose, stretched, and blew some heat into her hands. She was about to awaken Griggory when her eyes snagged on the broken platform where Vaka Aster’s vessel had stood.
“Stave’s surprise,” she mumbled. “I almost forgot.”
The flat top of the dais was a thin sheet of stone and slid away easily. A hardy wood plank beneath it covered a hidden storage compartment. When she looked inside, her joy bubbled over.
“Star Spark!” She reached in and retrieved both sword and scabbard. They’d been with her nearly her entire Knighthood, and she hadn’t realized till that moment how naked she’d felt without the hallowed weapon.
“The smithy who made that sword could juggle ten knives while singing you sixty verses of the Song of Figments and Fables without missing a word or a throw,” Griggory said behind her, apparently awoken by her uncontained cry of delight. “His voice, though, Verities tears, it was like listening to a frog with the croup being squished in a vise. E
ven a deaf man would wish he was deafer at the sound. But Gudmund Øster could forge a sword like no other.”
She stared at him, nearly unbelieving. Star Spark was at least as old as Ulfric. It had never occurred to her anyone alive would still know its pedigree, or its maker. By now, though, she was getting used to Griggory’s many surprises.
“It had a sister sword, too. Lovely steel with a blue tinge. The way light glinted from it when you swung it, it looked like an icicle hanging from a glacier. What was its name… ?” He trailed off. “That was it, Winter’s Bite.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “That sword still lies in the vaults in Vigil Tower.”
As Griggory gathered himself, she rummaged through the storage container, finding a waterskin, several packets of nuts and seeds stored for emergencies by the Knights, a hallowed dagger called Dragørglint and its belt and sheath, which she offered Griggory, and various items of clothing. Gratefully, she found a jacket, shrugged it over her thin shirt, and tied some heavier cloths to her shins using leather ties she found inside as well. They’d likely need to come off once they were out of the mountains, but for now she relished anything that would warm her permanently chilled bones.
When she was done, she said to the eldest Knight, “Well, it’s either to Vigil Tower through the interrealm well, or we have a long walk through the Howling Weald before us.”
Griggory was tethering his ragged robe closed. At her comment, he spun toward her with a look of surprise. “A walk? Through the Weald?”
She nodded. “Well, I’m pretty certain Ærd Scrylle’s not in Ivoryss, or else the Knights would have known about it. Which means it’s probably still in the forest. If my father never left Vinnr, he must have died in the Weald, and with my memories coming back, I may be able to find where it happened. If his bones rest there, maybe the Scrylle does too.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? She’d thought he’d left her for dead and taken the starpath well, but what if, in fact, she was the one who’d left him? “Shortly after we got here,” she said. “We came from Arc Rheunos and were walking along the Great Province Byway. Bandits attacked and killed my mother, and Greven grabbed me and ran. When we stopped, we’d gone deeper into the forest. I saw him readying the Scrylle to open a starpath, but I ran off before he did. I wanted…”
She paused for a moment, finding that along with her memories of that horrid day, her emotions were coming back too. That panic, that sheer anguish of seeing Ayanna fall by the roadside, was right now making her words feel thick and heavy. In a moment, she went on. “I wanted to get back to her. I think I knew even then that she was dead, but… so when my father set me down, I ran toward the road. I felt, or saw—I’m not sure—a flash like an emberflare cannon’s behind me. I thought he was leaving me, taking the starpath and leaving my mother and me both. But now I think it might have been something else.”
“A dragør.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed it. “Yes, a dragør. When I got back to the road, one of the beasts showed up and incinerated the bandits, along with my mother’s body. I don’t remember seeing it, but there’s nothing else it could have been. That’s where it all stops, my memories. I think I must have been found not long after.” I’ll probably never know why the dragør spared me, she thought. Or why Vaka Aster left me in Himmingaze after the fight on Balavad’s warship, for that matter. I seem to be perpetually forgotten or ignored.
“If the dragørs have the Scrylle, that would explain much,” Griggory said as he tightened down his dagger belt and started for the entryway, raring to go.
His statement was curious. The dragørs might have the Scrylle? It made some sense, she supposed. They’d been around, as far as humans were concerned, forever, and had been Vaka Aster’s first protectors. They’d know the value of a Scrylle as much as anyone. “You’re all right walking into the Weald to look for the artifact, knowing how dangerous it is?” she asked.
“It’s a long walk. Shall we?”
His note of impatience did not go unnoticed. Shrugging, she followed him out.
The chilled high-mountain air outside the cave was enough to wipe away any last residue of fatigue she felt, and it propelled them quickly down the mountain. The west side of Mount Omina had the most direct paths to the Great Province Byway, and in the process would put them on the Ivoryss side of the Morn Mountains and closer to the capital, Asteryss. Most importantly, these were the paths her parents had traveled all those turns ago. Perhaps they would jog more of her memories.
Mylla didn’t savor having to traverse the avalanche-strewn slopes and blackened forest along the mountain’s flank, where she’d thought they’d lost Symvalline and Isemay, but knowing the two of them had survived gave her a boost of resolve. To help matters along, it was clear that other travelers had come this way and already found the easiest path down since Mylla had last set foot on the mountain. Must have been the Ivoryssians Vaka Aster brought back from Himmingaze. Whatever the reasons Verities do, or don’t, aid their own creations, I’m grateful she decided to rescue so many from Balavad.
But not me…
She and Griggory picked plants and berries to eat with their preserved nuts on the way, even such meager sustenance enough to revive them. The rough going of their descent found them at the mountain’s base by late evening, and they spent the night short of reaching the Great Province Byway.
The byway was an ancient road that had been there even when Griggory was still young. Though its maintenance grew shoddier and shoddier the farther one got from Asteryss, there was no way to miss the wide flagstone passage, and their pace quickened when they reached it early the next morning.
Once, they heard a speeding skimmer coming toward them from Ivoryss. Deciding to err on the side of caution, they hid in the thick brush beside the road. Mylla’s guess was the travelers were heading to Yor to warn of danger and possibly seek aid. By now, the realm must be teeming with news of the Dyrraks and their potential aggressions, and it seemed best to simply let them be on their way. The Knights had their own plans, and once Mylla found what she was seeking, she hoped to rejoin them.
By late evening, she was beginning to recognize landmarks from her memories. The moss growing on the stones edging the roadside was thicker, some of the trees younger, and many older, but the shapes of mountains never changed no matter how long one lived. She now knew the highest peaks to the north as Dryft and Tarmvred, and in the distance almost too far to see was the Wilt, where the bruhawk aeries were hidden. I wish Yggo or Urgo was with us now. They might be able to aid us if we do encounter a—
That thought was cut off abruptly as she spotted something familiar. “There, that crooked rowan. I remember that.”
As a child, she’d noticed it immediately when Ayanna had warned her father to stop speaking. Their eyes had all shot to the side of the road where the brush was moving near the old rowan’s trunk. It was at least twice as wide as her arms could reach around and had been split midway sometime long past. But these Weald trees did not die easily. One branch of the split had continued upward, still growing strong, but the other had bowed into a half-rainbow shape with time. It was still sprouting green leaves, and its lower branches dipped down toward the earth like a willow. It was striking in its resilience, and it had remained lodged in her memories.
Griggory was looking around him as if lost, and she continued. “This spot is where we were standing when… when the bandits struck.”
That panicky feeling resurged, tightening her throat. She scanned the road around them. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she’d see the bodies or the char left by the dragør, not after this long. But then, she did. Or the mark at least of where they’d been, for several large flagstones had been laid down that were clearly newer than those around them. Those are replacing the ones burned by dragørfire. Is it actually hot enough to burn, or even melt, stone? The bandit’s skin had melted from
his bones, so she knew it was at least that hot.
“We need to backtrack a bit. My father carried me back toward Omina when we were attacked. It shouldn’t be far.”
They’d paced barely twenty yards when she saw what she now expected. Two more rowans with a set of branches that reached for each other and entwined in a natural arch. She’d passed under those in her father’s arms.
The sky to the west was beginning to darken. “We probably shouldn’t stay on the road tonight. There may be more travelers, and there’s no reason to interfere with them. Ready for a night in the Weald, Griggory?” She looked to her left, where she thought he was, but he was gone. “Griggory?” She just caught sight of him as he disappeared beneath the arching branches. “I guess that’s yes.”
Mylla might have known one relatively calm and peaceful night was all she should expect, for it was certainly all she was going to get.
She and Griggory had set up a bare-bones camp by a massive, hoary downed tree beside the road just as Halla set. As expected Mylla’s leg coverings had become unnecessary, and they’d used the thin leather straps that had secured them to her shins in hare snares, catching two for their dinner. Without even considering why she thought he knew, she’d asked Griggory if he thought a fire to roast them was safe. Griggory, it was obvious by now, had spent more time in the Weald than probably any human living, and she assumed he’d know what risks they might safely take before arousing the attentions of predators, such as a dragør.
His concerns, if he’d had any, apparently hadn’t been worth remarking on, and the fire cooked the hares to perfection. In fact, they were unaccountably delicious. Mylla supposed their good flavor was due to her having eaten little in the weeks prior, given that she’d been seabound and near dead.
As they chewed the savory rabbits, she asked, “How did you know to look for me? I mean, after you saw the warship explode.”
“Oh,” he remarked. “I didn’t. The slangarooks know a marked one, though. They saw you there, sunken and waterlogged, and word got back to me.”
