Prince of Time

by Tara Janzen

  Back by Aja’s side, Avallyn and a pair of White Ladies had come with a stretcher, and after a cursory examination, the Ladies gave the boy an injection and told Morgan he could be moved.

  “He’s lucky,” the woman with the hypodermic said. “No internal injuries and young enough that his leg will heal. Take him to the B wing in the hospital.”

  Their instructions given, they went on to the next wounded soldier, signaling for another stretcher.

  “B wing isn’t far and wasn’t hit,” Avallyn said somewhat breathlessly, kneeling down and helping him lift Aja onto the stretcher. The boy moaned louder.

  “You were safe?” he asked.

  “Aye. The Mother and I were kept in the corridor until the dust started to settle.”

  “Good.”

  “Not so good,” she disagreed, slanting him a brief glance. “I should have been with you. And the way to the weir platform has been blocked. The Night Watchers will find another route. But for now we need to get everybody out of here, before Corvus decides to launch another blast.”

  “Aye.” He pushed the hover control on the stretcher’s frame, while Avallyn snapped a strap over the boy to hold him on.

  With a whoosh, the stretcher rose into the air.

  “Take him,” he told her. “I’ll help here and meet you there.”

  Avallyn nodded and headed off across the courtyard, pushing Aja’s stretcher in front of her, guiding it through the people and the litter from the blast. As he watched her go, Morgan became aware of a deep, resonant sound that the battle had briefly obliterated. The Dragon Hearts were still being rung, and every knell found an echo in his veins.

  He had to go, no matter his fears.

  Half an hour later he made it to the hospital. Aja was well in hand, his leg set in a cooling gelcast, the lovely Sachi by his side, but Avallyn was nowhere to be seen.

  “Have you seen the princess?” he asked the acolyte.

  Soft brown eyes looked up at him. “She was here until I took over. There are so many wounded.”

  Aye. Morgan looked around. B wing had more than a hundred beds and all of them were filled, with cots set up in between them.

  He scanned the hospital wing again, searching for Avallyn, until his attention was caught and held by two people in desert robes making their way through the ward with a half-dozen blue-robed priestesses following in their wake. They stayed no more than a few seconds by each bed, but there was a noticeable difference in each area they left, as if the two were bestowing peace with each touch they gave.

  Oddly, Morgan felt a spark of recognition, though from such a distance, it was hard to tell why. He’d met a few desert walkers in his time, but none who would have business in Claerwen.

  The man moved with Tamisk’s grace, but he was too tall, his shoulders too wide, for him to be the mage. No, Morgan thought, the familiarity came from something else. The man’s hair was long, pulled back and tied at his nape, hanging in a loosely twisted skein down his back. ’Twas a deep, rich brown, an earth color, but half the sept riders Morgan had met wore their hair long.

  The woman’s hair was white, not the white of old age, but a gleaming, lustrous white, like pearls. She wore it in a thick braid that fell past her shoulders. Most strangely, she had a patch over her right eye, a sickle of silver cloth that looked like a crescent moon gracing the space between her cheek and brow.

  The woman gestured for one of the priestesses to come near and spoke into her ear. To Morgan’s surprise, when the priestess glanced up, she looked directly at him. When the woman was finished speaking, the priestess nodded and walked off.

  A low groan from the bed brought Morgan’s attention back to Aja. He smoothed a swath of hair off the boy’s brow; his skin was warm, but not hot, his eyes closed. His clothes had been removed, and to Morgan’s consternation the boy looked a bit thin beneath his blanket. He held himself responsible. Over the last few months, they’d spent too much time in bars and hellholes like Racht Square, and not enough time eating decent meals.

  “He’s strong, milord, and will recover,” Sachi said.

  Morgan looked up at the girl, noticing again why she’d so quickly caught Aja’s eye. Her hair was a rich dark brown and fluffed into loose curls that framed an uncommonly pretty face, all rosy cheeks and sweetly molded features. She wore white priestess robes, the shift hanging to the floor, draping across the full curves of her breasts and hips. Aja had always preferred a well-rounded lass, and Sachi was sensually rounded, enough so to have easily whetted the boy’s appetite—a fact bound to get him in trouble.

  “Your captain has the lineage of Sept Rush in the north,” the acolyte said, laying her hand on Aja’s chest. “I remember when the Sept was destroyed by a skraelpack running contraband out of Leag II. Our search party didn’t find any survivors, and all feared the line was lost. Your captain’s appearance has brought great joy to the White Ladies.”

  Aja would love that, Morgan thought wryly, imagining all the poking and prodding that would go along with being the last genetic link to a desert tribe. Lineage was Claerwen’s work, compiling all the lineages of Earth. The better to manipulate them—so Avallyn had told him.

  “I think he’s gifted with second sight,” Morgan said, giving the girl another bit of information. He would as soon Aja was kept in Claerwen and out of trouble, providing the temple complex held. If he could get to the past and destroy Dharkkum, he was bound to improve the priestesses’ chances of survival.

  “Many in Sept Rush were,” Sachi said. “Where did you come across him?”

  “He was with me when I reached Pan-shei ten years ago.”

  “He could have been no more than a child then, when you and he came out of the desert,” she murmured, smoothing her hand down to Aja’s waist and back up to cup his jaw.

  Morgan wondered if he was imagining the boy relaxing deeper into the bed, or if the girl had a healer’s touch.

  “What makes you think we came out of the desert?” he asked.

  Her gaze strayed to the stripe in his hair before returning to Aja. “All time-riders come out of the desert, usually within a hundred-mile radius of either Claerwen, Pushranjure in the Southern Kingdom, or Sonnpur-Dzon in the Dhaun Himal. In the old days, when the worms were earthbound, all time-riders came through an earthbound weir. Now...” She shrugged. “There’s no telling for sure where the worms will strike, especially if our chrystaalt supplies are low and the miners and black marketeers have hoarded theirs. Chrystaalt will always draw a worm.”

  “So how do you know when a time-rider has landed?”

  “Storms,” she said. “The worms always bring great sandstorms.”

  Morgan remembered a storm, a killing storm of sand and dust that had near choked the life out of him—and the next thing he remembered had been walking into Pan-shei with Aja.

  Sachi turned and pulled another blanket from a cupboard in the wall. As she tucked it around Aja, its silky green folds molding to the boy’s body, Morgan remembered where he’d seen such cloth before. Tamisk’s pallet had been covered in the same blankets, but long before Morgan had known the mage’s magic, he’d seen the cloth on the Quicken-tree of Merioneth.

  “Is it silk?” he asked, fingering an edge. ’Twas amazingly soft.

  “Pryf silk,” Sachi told him. “The dragons stopped breeding long before I was born, but some silk remains in the old nest beneath the White Palace, much of it still green.”

  “What of worms in Claerwen? Don’t you have them here?”

  “They broke free of their weir over a thousand years past and now snake across the sky. ’Tis not down you’ll go this time, prince, but up.”

  Well, hell, and wasn’t that a damned discomfiting image, he thought, wishing he hadn’t asked. At least going down, a person could be assured they were still on Earth. Going up? Hell, that could be anywhere in the parsec.

  He shifted his gaze to the ward, wondering where Avallyn was, feeling more and more certain that the time for leaving
had come. Once again his attention was captured by the two desert walkers and their cadre of priestesses.

  Aye, they were definitely familiar, he thought, his brow furrowing.

  The man turned then, and Morgan saw the stripe in his hair. Time-riders. His pulse quickened.

  Bed by bed, they drew closer, talking to the wounded, and with every step, Morgan’s sense of familiarity grew—especially about the man. At one of the cots, he looked up and caught Morgan’s gaze, and something tightened in Morgan’s chest. The desert walker could have been Dain Lavrans... could have been, but wasn’t. The similarities were painfully clear, the long line of his jaw, the dark-winged arch of his eyebrows, the wry smile that should have belonged to Dain, and could have belonged only to one of his descendants.

  A flurry of activity near the east doors drew everyone’s attention and heralded the High Priestess’s entrance into the ward. The old crone strode forth through the beds, obviously summoned, her face flushed, her robes still dusty from the courtyard debacle. Avallyn was with her, and when both women reached the pair of desert walkers, they knelt on the floor.

  No mere time-riders, then, Morgan thought, watching the exchange. He was the Prince of Time and the High Priestess hadn’t knelt to him.

  “Who are they?” he asked, knowing every eye in the place was on the pair.

  “ ’Tis Rhayne,” Sachi murmured. “White Bitch of the Dangoes and her consort, Kael Lavrans.”

  “Lavrans?” Morgan asked, stunned.

  “Aye, milord. His powers are said to put even Tamisk’s to shame.”

  A considerable feat, Morgan thought, but then what else for the dragon-maker, Ysaia, than an equally powerful mage. Dain would be pleased to know his line had held so true.

  As if hearing her ancient name, the woman lifted her gaze from the kneeling priestess and princess and looked to him. With a lift of her hand, she commanded him to come forth.

  Morgan wasn’t sure if getting that close to her was in his best interest, but there was no gainsaying the witch-mage. He felt conspicuous as hell crossing the ward with everyone watching.

  “Time is short for you,” Rhayne said in a rich, honeyed voice when he reached her. ’Twas a sweet and slow-flowing voice, with a soothing depth, as if though time was short for him, all of time were hers. ’Twas a voice made for enchantments.

  Her face was artfully lean, her skin luminous in stark contrast to the drabness of her clothes. She looked to have traveled a thousand miles across the Waste, though considering the blaze in her consort’s hair, they’d probably come much farther than that.

  “Milady,” he said, bending his knee in an act of obeisance.

  She stopped him halfway to the floor and raised him up, her touch sending a deep awareness of her through him. Rhayne, he thought. Blessed, wild Rhayne.

  “Do you not remember me, old friend?” The voice and her words lured him into meeting her gaze. Her left eye was blue, a strange, infinite landscape of unnerving depth, like the heavens themselves. Colors floated across her iris in a mesmerizing dance of varying hues, the subtlest shift-shape he’d yet seen, and indeed, looking upon her, he felt a bit entranced.

  “No one could forget you,” he said honestly.

  “Then look again, and do not be fooled by my current form.”

  Her words triggered a memory, but not of her. ’Twas Mychael ab Arawn he thought of and the red dragon, and how the two had become one. And he remembered Tamisk and the gyrfalcon. And when he looked at her again, he remembered the Hart Tower and the sleek albino levrier Dain had kept.

  “Numa.” The word was a whisper, as was Rhayne’s smile of satisfaction.

  ’Twas Numa, come to him across ten thousand years—but not the hound. Numa the hound had died on the sands of the Serpent Sea, fighting in battle. ’Twas Ysaia, she whose cauldron had conjured the firespell emblazoned on his skin.

  “Aye, you know me for what I am—and for what I once was.”

  He lowered his gaze, filled with the memory of how he’d last seen her, dying on a dark shore, her gleaming white coat stained with blood, the gaping wound where her right eye had been. He’d had little time to notice her and even less to give comfort.

  “My apologies, lady,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “No regrets, Morgan. I lived as a hound and died as a hound, and because I died, Ceridwen lived and gave me Kael to share the burden of the turning wheel, an avatar kissed by the time worms while in his mother’s womb.”

  Morgan’s head came up. Ceridwen’s son? And Dain’s?

  “Morgan,” the man said, acknowledging his startled glance with an enigmatic smile.

  No far-flung descendent, but Dain’s own son. Morgan had to restrain his impulse to embrace the man.

  “You’re very like your father,” he said after taking a steadying breath.

  “No, not very,” Kael said, his smile broadening. As Morgan looked at him, he realized Kael’s words were no reproof, only the truth. Where Rhayne’s eyes reflected the heavens by day, Kael’s were the starry nights, windows on the doorways between the past and the future. Both the man and the woman were timeless in a way Tamisk had yet to master, and in a manner Dain could not have imagined—until, of course, his son had been born.

  Sweet Jesu. Dain must have had at least a few sleepless nights with the boy. Avatar, Rhayne had said, and when Morgan looked in his eyes, he believed Kael might actually be a god made flesh.

  “I gave you a boy, Morgan,” Rhayne said, bringing his attention back to her. “A red-haired boy from Sept Rush. My first gift.”

  “Sept Rush was destroyed ten years ago, lady,” the High Priestess said, coming to her feet. She’d obviously had enough of bowing and scraping and being ignored.

  “The sept, but not the boy,” the witch-mage replied. “I would have known if the boy had died.”

  “He’s been wounded,” Morgan told her.

  “All the more reason to take me to him. Now.” ’Twas a command, not a request, and with a sweep of her hand, she bade him lead the way.

  ~ ~ ~

  Aja remembered her. There was no forgetting the White Lady of Light. No forgetting the day she had chosen him as companion to the ragged man who had walked into Sept Rush from out of the desert. There had been a storm. A worm storm, his mother had called it. Dust and sand had blown across the Waste, forming a wall hundreds of feet high and blocking out the sun. Behind the face of the wall, a dancing tunnel of wind and sand had bucked and rolled, twisting through the dunes and leaving destruction in its wake.

  Destruction and Morgan ab Kynan.

  The lady had come soon after his arrival, within a matter of days. Long enough for Aja’s mother, Ahzur, to have healed some of the man’s hurts. Long enough for him to have finally eaten and held his food down. The septs were always at war with the Warmonger. Even as a child Aja was used to battle and warriors who had reached their end, and he’d never seen anyone who looked so terrible survive. The man’s eyes had been sunk into his head, his hair frayed like a wildman’s. He’d been caked in blood, yet he’d had no open wounds, only the scrapes and scratches that Ahzur had covered with salve and bound with soft cotton. He’d been delirious, raving, his skin cold to the touch and pale as ice, except along the wicked scar that ran diagonally across his torso. There his skin had been bruised black, blue, and a sickly purple spreading into yellow and green, great splotches of color that bespoke of a trauma Ahzur and Aja’s father, the Sept Lord Miekle, had whispered about long after they thought the children had fallen asleep.

  Then the lady had come, and of all the people in the sept, she had chosen him, Aja, to bind to the man with sacred vows. Now the man and the lady were before him again, and Aja’s greatest fear was that they’d come to undo those vows, that the time had come for Morgan to be taken from him.

  “Shhh,” the lady hushed him when he would have spoken. She was not beautiful like Sachi, but always there was the light that shone from within her, in her glowing white hair and luminous skin.


  Aja shifted his gaze to his lord, who stood behind her, and he felt the edge of his fear sharpen. Morgan’s face was grim. Morgan who, despite his delirium, had saved him when the sept and everyone he’d loved had been destroyed. All had been chaos in the caves, skraelings running everywhere, murdering and devouring. It had been Morgan who had cut the arm off the skraeling that had snatched him from his bed. Morgan who had stood in the doorway with his bloody sword, barely able to stay on his feet, and killed the next three beastmen who had tried to make a battle ration out of a small boy. Only Morgan who had still been alive with him when it had all been over and the Warmonger’s troops had withdrawn.

  Aja had found his mother’s body, what was left of it, and with trembling hands, his whole being wracked with gut-wrenching nausea, he’d forced himself beyond his shock and horror and picked her finger bones out of the sand. With the utmost care, he’d packed them into his yellow wallet—his talisman forever. When he’d finished, Morgan had taken his hand and a dead sept rider’s lasgun and led them out of the dark cave and into the desert. The two of them had wandered for months, the madman and an orphaned boy, before the lights of Pan-shei had drawn them out of the Waste.

  Those months were as lost to Aja as they were to Morgan. All he ever remembered from that time was how cold the nights had been and how Morgan had held him, sharing his warmth and yet so silent, his night blue eyes starkly wild; and how he’d prayed that the man wouldn’t go completely mad or die and leave him alone.

  “I never meant for you to be parted,” the White Lady said, her hand smoothing the hair off his brow. Her touch was soothingly cool. “But this wound you’ve taken will keep you abed for much longer than we have to give. Morgan must go, boy, and you cannot go with him.”

  She’d known his fear, and she’d spared him nothing.

  Aja shot Morgan a wild look.

  “You went through the weir wounded. I saw you. You were still covered in blood when you came to the sept.” ’Twas an accusation as well as a plea. Morgan couldn’t leave him, and for certes not for such a flimsy reason as a broken leg. They’d been through far worse and always pulled through—together.