Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  Lee wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t know about that. I’m less likely to accidentally burn a hole in somebody using magick. I can control that a little. These . . .” She gingerly touched a couple of the pulse charges hanging from her belt. “These, I’m not so sure about.”

  Dais just smiled. “If you’re that nervous with them, just don’t use them. But don’t bother arguing with us. You’ll go with the weapons or not go at all.”

  And that wasn’t an option. Lee had to get away from the base camp for a little while, away from the stink of death, from the ever-burning fires and the morass of emotion that hung over the place like a cloud.

  Part of her felt guilty, knowing that she was going out into the forest just to escape the job that lay before Kalen and the others. A grim, ugly job. Accounting for survivors. Disposing of the dead. Disposing . . . such a cold word. Like they were tossing out some Chinese food that had gone bad. These were people. Eira had been one of them.

  Unwittingly, she slid a hand into her pocket and touched the disc Eira had given her. It was called an emsphere. Kalen said it could store thousands of images, but this one had held only the image of Aneva. My mother. Lee had few conscious memories of her mother, but looking at her face seemed to bring back memories long forgotten. Bits and pieces of songs that Lee used to hear as she drifted away to sleep. Warm arms holding her close. A soft, exotic fragrance and the most beautiful amber eyes. Just vague little things, but they were enough that Lee could understand one important thing.

  She had been loved.

  Ana, my Ana. She died doing her damnedest to protect you. Lee was still a little too shaky to think about the woman Eira called Aneva. Right now, although Lee hated to admit it, she wasn’t ready to think about her mother yet, so she simply blocked it out. The coward’s way out, maybe, but the woman was little more than a stranger to Lee, and since she had died years ago, that wasn’t likely to change. Thinking about her now wasn’t going to change things, so Lee decided not to think about her.

  But even though she could push her thoughts about her mother into a neat little box and not dwell on them, she couldn’t do the same thing with Eira. Eira’s death hurt. Lee didn’t know if it was because the old lady had been the only blood relative Lee actually knew, or if it had something to do with whatever memories she had suppressed of this place. But it hurt. The pain kept sneaking up on her, grabbing her by the throat and blinding her with the pain. Even now as she hiked through the dense undergrowth, tears stung her eyes.

  She blinked them away. There wasn’t any time to cry right now. No time to mourn. But if she lived through this, she was going to mourn for the odd, old woman that she really never had a chance to know.

  The ground rumbled and Lee swore, bracing herself for another quake. “It’s just an aftershock.” She looked up and saw Morne watching her from a few feet away. He stood with his legs widespread, and the little tremors rolling through the ground didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

  Lee, on the other hand, felt sick, physically, mentally. Drained, exhausted, and terrified. And grieving. No, she hadn’t really known Eira, and now she had the rest of her life in front of her to think about how she had treated the only family she’d ever known.

  Hell couldn’t be any worse than the past few days. It just wasn’t possible. Nothing could be worse. The base was in shambles. The earthquake that had hit two days ago had done a great deal of damage, and what had escaped the quake hadn’t necessarily escaped the subsequent raids.

  Thousands were dead. Burying them all would take more time and manpower than Kalen had, so mass funeral pyres had been built. Lee had heard the words “Blessings on your path” so many times she wanted to scream. “Blessings”—not a word to say over the dead body of a child. But it was what these people said, like “Godspeed” or something. So Lee said it as well, even though that calm, lovely phrase made her nauseous. Blessings on your path, brother. Blessings on your path, elder. Blessings on your path, poor little baby . . .

  When she had said it the last time over the still body of a toddler, Lee had lost it. She had pulled away from the pyre and just started to walk. She probably would have walked clear out of the camp, into the mountains and on and on until she dropped from exhaustion, if Kalen hadn’t stopped her.

  Kalen had made a command decision and ordered the complete evacuation of all remaining families. By the time he was done, there would be only soldiers left in the camp, and Lee figured that was how it should be. Part of her wished she could join the refugees.

  She wanted so bad to run. She was still trying to come to grips with the fact that what she had seen over the past few days was real.

  Raviners, Ikacado, the wyrms, Sirvani—Lee felt like she had fallen into some kind of comic book but the artist had neglected to give her a decent superpower. She didn’t belong here. She couldn’t keep up with these people, these soldiers. They knew how to fight, and if they were scared, they didn’t show it.

  Lee, however, was pretty sure she had a huge, neon-lit sign over her head with flashing letters that read, I’m scared and I can’t handle this. Please send me back home.

  The ground shuddered again, and this tremor was stronger than the last. She heard some muffled voices, a couple of harsh exclamations and then a huge crack. Distantly, she heard people screaming out warnings, and she sensed Morne moving toward her with a speed that was inhuman.

  She wanted to look up, but her body took over as death came hurtling down toward her from the sky. She dove to the side, rolling her body in a tight ball. Debris hit her back. Something crashed into the ground—Lee felt the rush of air on her body, and slowly she lifted her head to look.

  Dust and leaves floated through the air. Lee brushed at her hair as she stared at the massive tree bough. As she gaped, one last tremor shuddered through the ground below her and then all was silent. Apparently destroying one of the forest giants was enough to appease whatever had the earth so pissed off. Lee cast a glance up into the canopy of leaves, studying the empty piece of sky. She could see the path the huge limb had taken. Smaller branches had been broken during the descent. Small by comparison at least. Some of those limbs were as big around as her waist.

  The biggest limb, the one that would have crushed her if she hadn’t moved, was probably as big around as a VW Bug and its branches reached upward so high, she couldn’t see over it.

  Morne’s blond head appeared over the rubble, and he took one look at Lee before closing his eyes. Lee recognized the sentiment. As soon as she could breathe again, she was going to roll over, kiss the dirt and thank God.

  Dais’s voice intruded on her attempts to catch her breath. “Anybody hurt?” There was silence and she felt all eyes on her. Dais cocked a gunmetal gray brow and asked, “Are you well, Lee?”

  She slowly pushed up on her elbow and looked at the older man. Under her breath, she mumbled, “Depends on how you define well.” People started toward her and she waved them off. “I’m okay. Just give me a few minutes.”

  The sudden onslaught of voices was too much for her spinning head, and instead of climbing to her feet to inspect the damage like everybody else was doing, she fell back onto the forest floor. Lee squinted up at the empty patch in the canopy overhead. She could see the dismal gray clouds through the patch. It hit her like a pang, then. The sun didn’t shine here. She hadn’t seen blue sky in nearly a month.

  God. Had it only been a month?

  It seemed like a lifetime, yet oddly, it also seemed like no time at all had passed. She could remember sitting at her workstation, the smell of the pencils she liked to use when she was sketching, the scent of paper, the weight of it in her hands, the feel of a keyboard under her fingers—the feel of the stylus. Watching the monitor as her dreams took on life before her eyes.

  How many times had she sketched out memories from this world? Suppressed memories that only appeared in her dreams? It was unsettling to realize there were probably many, many memories. The piece she had been wo
rking on in the days before she fell into the bizarre place had come from a dream about the war. About Kalen.

  “You aren’t injured.”

  Lee opened her eyes and found Morne staring down at her with his unsettling blue-black eyes. “Is that a question or a statement?”

  He blinked. “We need to get moving. There isn’t much time before nightfall, and we must all be back at the base before then.”

  Lee lifted her head and stared at the limb that had damn near turned her into an ugly little smear on the ground. “I need a few minutes, pal.”

  He hesitated and then looked off to his left. Lee didn’t bother turning her head. She just closed her eyes and concentrated on getting her breathing back to normal. If they wanted her to move before she was ready, they could damn well just carry her. But all Morne said was “You continue the search, Lothen, Dais. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Dais argued with Morne. “It isn’t wise to split up, not for any reason. If she isn’t hurt, she needs to get up and get moving. Staying in one place is dangerous.”

  “I’ll stay with her. She will be in no danger, Dais,” Morne said, his voice dismissive.

  Dais opened his mouth and Lee wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but instead, she took a deep breath and braced herself to stand up. She wasn’t in the mood to listen to the two arrogant warriors argue—well, Dais would argue. Morne would simply do whatever in the hell he wished and Dais could just go screw himself for all the healer cared. But Dais closed his mouth without saying anything and turned on his heel.

  He made no sound as he departed, and she closed her eyes. Leaves rustled on the ground as people headed out, and Lee heard a few twigs snap as she shifted around a little. There was a rock digging into the back of her shoulder, and the smell of fresh wood and crushed leaves filled her head. Lee cracked an eye open and looked up at Morne. “I need a minute.”

  “So you said,” he murmured. He glanced up and looked around as though he heard something. “Take your minute. Or a few more if you need them.” He turned around and walked off. As he disappeared from her field of vision, Lee shifted her gaze upward, once more staring at the sullen gray sky.

  Slowly, her erratic heartbeat settled down as she reaffirmed that she wasn’t trapped under the tree bough—or dead. Her hands were shaky and she had a feeling shock was moving in, so she tried to find something else to think of besides what had almost happened.

  The forest here was strange. Back home when she went on a hike, she heard the call of birds and insects, but here, it was silent. She could hear the wind whispering through the branches above but little else. Just silence.

  No . . . not silence. There was music. Her ears pricked and she cocked her head, trying to hear it better. It was faint, at first. So faint she almost didn’t even hear it. But as Lee lay there on the damp, cool ground, she realized there was music—like the music she’d heard before, coming from the Veil.

  Enticing. Enchanting. Slowly, she opened her eyes and pushed herself upright. Without even realizing that she had done so, she climbed to her feet and started to move around the fallen limb. The music grew just a little louder, beckoning to her. Her skin felt tight and hot. She pressed her back to one of the huge trees and circled around. She glanced around it and saw something glowing, just faintly, off in the distance.

  What the ...

  It was a soft blue light, kind of pretty, really. Something inside her leaped at the sight of that light and she stepped forward. Her body didn’t feel like her own as she placed each step with slow, precise care, never once making a sound. Her breathing was shallow and her gaze focused. Closer—closer, a dry, cynical bitch in her head murmured. Somebody is up to no good and we’ll find out who it is, then we’ll kill him.

  All the while, there was a saner part of her mind that was screaming at her to run. Run very far, very fast. That pretty blue light spelled destruction, and no smart witch went near it.

  As if all of that wasn’t confusing enough, there was a third voice clamoring in the mix, the one that Lee recognized as her self, the self she knew. That voice was telling Lee she really did need to run, and she needed to keep running until she managed to wake up from this bizarre nightmare she had found herself in.

  When she finally managed to do that, she was going to get herself some serious, serious therapy. No more sleep studies, either, but actual, honest-to-God, psychiatric help. The kind that came with a couch and a fifty-minute hour. Therapy was the key. Antidepressants or something would surely stop these bizarre dreams that felt so damned real.

  That cynical bitch in her head seemed to laugh. This is no dream, babe. This is real life—this is your life, and it’s about time you opened your eyes and dealt with it. Deal with me. Now get your ass closer, because we have a job to do.

  Hell. She was this close to arguing with herself again, and this time, her other self wasn’t going to shut up, either. This was the same cool, collected bitch that had killed the Ikacado that day when Eira stroked out. The warrior that Kalen insisted she was. She didn’t feel like that woman—

  Because you won’t let yourself. Open your eyes. You’re here. This is your reality now—accept it. Accept me. Or you will die. The last part seemed to burn through her mind, demanding that she either accept it, once and for all, or run away before she got herself, and everybody around her, killed.

  Run away. Part of her longed to do just that. But Lee had already acknowledged that running away wasn’t an option. She couldn’t run from Kalen. Even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. Leaving him was just unthinkable. She’d just met him—at least it partly seemed that way to her, but in other ways, she felt like she had known him her whole life. Had been waiting for him her whole life.

  She supposed that in a way, she had. Kalen claimed that she had been slipping in and out of his life since she was a child, and heaven knew that she had dreamed about him often. All those sketchbooks back home were evidence of that.

  Besides, where would she run to? Even if she tried, there was no place on this world that was truly safe. Eventually that destruction and death that lingered around the gate would find every last safe solace. If such places even existed here anymore.

  Accept it. Accept me.

  Silently, Lee said, Like you’re giving me any choice—

  She had no sooner thought that than that illusive curtain in her mind was destroyed. It didn’t disappear. That was too silent a word to even begin to describe what happened. More, it was like an avalanche struck and that curtain was decimated under the power of it. That cool, cynical bitch wasn’t just a voice murmuring inside her head. She was that cool, cynical bitch. She was the witch that stood there staring at the blue nimbus with fear in her heart, because she knew what it was.

  The Veil. It wasn’t just the flickering glimpse that Lee had managed on her own, either. It had been raised, completely and fully, so perfectly done that Lee could see the stark, desert landscape of Anqar and feel the whisper of hot winds that managed to blow through.

  Somebody on her side of the Veil was speaking to another person through it. More—she understood them. It wasn’t English they spoke, or the more lyrical version of English that seemed to be the dominant language in this world. It was alien, consisting of an odd mix of guttural phrases and musical trills that didn’t seem like speech at all.

  Yet, it was, and she understood it. Understood it—she who had barely managed a C in Spanish could understand these men as well as if they had been speaking English.

  “This is a dangerous game, brother.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  There was a long pause and then the first speaker, the one on Lee’s side of the Veil, said, “Are you certain it’s worth it? All of this for vengeance?”

  A soft, sad laugh and then the man in Anqar spoke. “It isn’t for vengeance. It is for her memory—and for a promise I made. I will keep that promise. The question is will you keep yours to me?”

  Lee edged just a little forwar
d and peeked around the girth of the tree, staring toward the men speaking. She couldn’t see the man on her side of the Veil without exposing herself, but she could see the other man. The sight of him turned her blood to ice, and terror arced through her. Sirvani—

  He wore the traditional, stark garb of the Sirvani: black pants, bare-chested, leather crisscrossing over the naked expanse of muscle there. She saw the hilts of two swords, one over each shoulder. His head was bald, but she suspected that was by design, rather than nature. His left ear was pierced with a series of multicolored gems, and her newfound knowledge whispered to her that those earrings marked him as a Sirvani of significant rank.

  At the center of his chest, where the straps of leather formed an X, there was another stone, larger and glowing the same shade of blue as the Veil. It pulsed, and something about the rhythm of it made her think that it was pulsing in tandem with the Sirvani’s heartbeat.

  The man she couldn’t see sighed, and Lee heard a world of weariness in that single sound. “I do not make a vow lightly, Arnon. I give it, I give it for always. But are you so certain that your love would want your death?”

  “My love,” the Sirvani muttered, his voice bitter. He turned away from the Veil, and Lee could see him as he lowered his head. “She has been lost to me for so many years, I do not know what she would want—other than keeping the promise I made her. I cannot do that without you.”

  Lee heard a rush of noise, and she retreated a little more, pressing her back to the rough bark of the tree. A long string of words she didn’t understand, although she did comprehend the meaning behind them. Cussing was pretty much cussing, it seemed, no matter what world you were in or what language was spoken. A brief pause followed by “Do you understand what it is you’re asking of me? You ask me to stand by and watch while you all but commit suicide.”

  “I’ve been dead inside for years, brother, and we both know it. Besides, there is no way of knowing that the . . .” Lee couldn’t make out those words. It sounded like “Ashni Mirn,” but she had no way of knowing what that meant. “. . . will know I am the one behind the failures.”