Elianas leaned back. “The how I shall tell you in private.”
“And there is your surprise,” Torrullin said.
Elianas ignored him. “The where I am able to share now.”
Quilla spread his tiny hands.
“Kathin Arne.”
Both Tristan and Quilla frowned their ignorance, but Torrullin scraped his chair on the floor in the violence of his backward movement. “How in hell did you enter Kathin Arne?”
Elianas was expressionless. “I told you, the how remains private.”
“Goddamn, Kathin Arne.”
“What is this place?” Quilla asked.
“It’s a realm, Quilla,” Tristan sighed.
“In Ariann,” Torrullin said. “Note; not Reaume with its Syllvan Gatekeepers, but Ariann with its Dryad Sentinels.”
Elianas’ fingers rested on his arm. “Are you able to enter?”
Torrullin closed his eyes. “Yes, but I will need …”
“Lowen?”
“My wings.”
Elianas leaned back, swearing softly.
“I do not hear you saying we should leave this alone,” Torrullin barked.
“We should leave this alone,” Elianas said without expression.
“You cannot,” Tristan said, “because Immirin is a Walker of Realms.”
Elianas swiped hands through his hair as he lurched to his feet. “A Walker? That goes a long way in explaining her power, but a Walker in Kathin Arne? All gods, how much …” He shut his mouth.
Torrullin leaned back in his chair again. “She needed Wings, Elianas. No Walker is able to enter Kathin Arne walking. One would have to fly.”
Elianas sat and stared at his hands.
“Quilla, I think we are done here,” Tristan said. “Come with me for breakfast on Akhavar.”
The birdman nodded. “I am hungry, yes. Thank you.”
The other two did not respond and they left without further word. So much for the morning meeting.
TORRULLIN PLACED HIS HANDS flat on the table. “Immirin as Walker is not relevant to Kathin Arne, but her Walker status is to Rivalen, which is one reason we need to speak to her. The other is the father. My Walker status is irrelevant to Kathin Arne as well. A Walker cannot enter. Some realms are inaccessible, always, to a Walker. Her status would affect nothing there.”
Elianas nodded. “But Wings would.”
“Yes.”
Elianas looked up. “I did not fly in.”
“You did, Elianas, for there is no other way to enter. How do you think you did it?”
The dark man stared at him. “By wishing it and then creating a bridge.”
Torrullin inhaled, closing his eyes. “Did you actually see this bridge?”
A long silence ensued, followed by an audible swallow. “Am I the reason she died?” Elianas burst out.
“I do not know. Are you?”
Elianas reared back and said no more.
After a moment Torrullin said, “If Immirin remains in Kathin Arne, she lost her Wings. If she is not there, she flew out. As you did.”
“I do not recall flying.’
“They are not called Shadow Wings without reason. The Shadows serve to hide our flights. We had mighty Wings, Elianas.”
The dark man rested his head on his hands. “I know.”
“Your shadows and her light - look what the opposition did to Saska. Am I not responsible for Saska’s death?”
Elianas raised dark eyes filled with suffering. “I am a prince among demons.”
Torrullin drew breath. “I have described myself in those words more than once.”
“I cannot speak of her, not so soon after … this.”
“Perhaps the time to speak of her will come inside Kathin Arne.”
Elianas stared at him. “We are going in.”
“We have to.”
Elianas closed his eyes. “Perhaps then, yes.”
Luvanor
THERE WAS NOTHING for it. Lowen was about to receive a visit, earlier than planned. To divest someone of their wings, and to receive those wings, required large amounts of adrenaline, such as they experienced as a threesome only the night before, as they employed it in the nowhere place.
Elianas, before they went to Luvanor, said he wished they knew about the need for wings before, for he did not think they could now repeat that performance.
On the windswept beach before her cottage, the two men were reluctant.
“There must be another way,” Elianas muttered.
“There is. Lowen takes us in.”
Elianas after a moment said, “Easier now, but easier in Kathin Arne?”
“That would be the problem, yes.”
“Boys! Visiting so soon?” Lowen called out from her porch.
They approached up the sandy incline, with Torrullin calling out, “We are at a loose end, thought we would do your roof!”
“Then come on in!” Laughing, Lowen returned indoors.
The two men glanced at each other and both squared shoulders.
INSIDE ALL WAS AS rustic as Torrullin remembered it.
“Have you had breakfast?” Lowen yelled from the kitchen.
“No,” Elianas said, moving there.
“Good, then I have an excuse to rustle up something decent for a change.” Lowen smiled over her shoulder at him as he entered.
“Need a hand?”
“Sure. You make the best coffee.” She waved at a nearby cabinet.
He set to.
“I am going up,” Torrullin called from somewhere and soon they heard noises up on the roof.
As she drew out pans and ingredients, Lowen murmured, “Why are you really here?”
“We need your help.”
“Major help?”
“Pretty much,” Elianas nodded. He found the kettle and filled it with water.
“Beyond Neolone’s message.”
“Yes.”
“You seem different this morning, Elianas, as if you have had a massive shock.”
“Yes.” He set the heat for the water and moved to measuring out ground coffee beans.
Lowen hacked at a seed loaf. “Can you tell me?”
“No.”
“And yet here you are. Something you learned brought you to me. It must be connected.”
“Stop fishing,” he muttered. “Where is your sugar or honey?”
“Don’t have.”
He proceeded to create the required ingredients, including cream.
“Do that for bacon as well.”
Glancing at her, he did so, and passed it over.
Finished with the bread, she stood at her stove and started frying the rashers. “It’s nice having you here.”
He smiled slightly. “We rarely do normal social things.”
A mighty pounding on the roof sheets had both of them looking up.
Elianas laughed. “Watch, soon he will give up on physical repair and snap his fingers for some magical help. He is impatient these days.”
Lowen smiled. “You know each other well.”
Elianas shrugged and rummaged for plates and utensils, proceeding to set the table.
“It’s my Wings, isn’t it?” she muttered, flipping the rashers.
No reply.
Reaching for the eggs, she said. “If you take them, what happens to my immortality?”
Elianas leaned against the counter, folded his arms and looked at her. “It remains.”
“Who will wear them?”
“He will.” Elianas frowned.
“You do not like it.”
“As dangerous as you are with them, Lowen, I prefer them on you. He changes when he has Wings.”
She nodded, cracking eggs. “It changes one, it does. Suddenly you care less.” She glanced at him. “Someone with as much compassion as he has becomes cruel.” She took his kettle off the heat as it whistled. “They would impact less on you, I think.”
“Because I have no compassion?” He reached for the ket
tle and poured water over the ground beans, set the concoction to drip.
“Because you no longer want them. It would be expediency.”
“You are saying he wants them.”
“Of course he does.”
Elianas shrugged, taking honey and cream to the table. “Eventually expediency will be forgotten. Wings are addictive.”
“I know,” she whispered, hauling the two pans from the heat and bringing them over.
Boots landed with a thud in the sand outside and Torrullin strode in. “I smell bacon.”
“Just in time,” Lowen murmured.
They ate while the coffee filtered.
Torrullin looked from one to the other. “The subject is raised, I see.”
“You should let Elianas wear them.”
He shook his head, “Tarlinn removed his ability to take them on.”
Elianas stared at him. “Truth?”
Torrullin inclined his head, popping egg and bacon into his mouth.
“I find I am relieved,” Elianas muttered and fetched the coffee. After pouring, he sat. “Very relieved.”
Lowen sipped. “Excellent, as always.” She sipped more, before saying, “You assume I want to give them up. I might for Elianas, Torrullin, but not for you. You would have a fight on your hands here.”
“Why not for me?” He lifted his mug.
“Shadow Wings is a darker state than Destroyer, not so? Well, I met Destroyer, remember? Forget it, Torrullin. You already have too much to contend with.” Lowen sipped again. “Besides, you know what must happen to take them from me. Forget that, too.”
They continued eating in silence.
Eventually Elianas said, “Then you must take us in.”
“Realm travel? That is what this is about?” Lowen plonked her mug down. She glared at Torrullin. “You would go to these lengths for a hop into another place? You know I would help.”
“This is not an ordinary realm.”
“No realm is ‘ordinary’!”
Torrullin met her gaze. “Ariann.”
“What? Shit.” She stared back at him, her gaze glazing as if she accessed memory. Then she shook her head and focused. “That might explain it. There may be another way.” Pushing aside plate and mug, she leaned onto the table. “Last night … well, I couldn’t sleep, so I went looking for Neolone. A distraction, you know? I found him and all he said to me was to ask for a scale when we were thrice present. Cryptic crap, and he wouldn’t budge. But, given what you want to do, hmm?”
To escape the Nowhere Sphere Lowen and Caballa brought back one of Neolone’s scales and they used the tangible connection to flee that war zone. Elianas created a bridge.
Torrullin blinked at her. “Will it work?”
“It could. If the three of us enter my vision together, accept a scale, Elianas can build a bridge to overfly Ariann and enter a specific place, if he knows the location, that is.”
“I know it,” the dark man breathed.
“Overfly,” Torrullin murmured. “It could work, yes.”
“Wait,” Elianas said. “Are you suggesting we leave directly from the place of vision?”
“That’s the impression I received from Neolone, though we didn’t actually discuss a journey,” Lowen confirmed.
“I must build a bridge from our minds into a physical realm on the other side of what is known and drag us from the intangible into the tangible, body and mind?” Elianas snorted. “Impossible.”
“Why?” Torrullin questioned.
“A bridge has a beginning and an end, Torrullin. Where is the beginning if we are in a vision?”
“He has a point,” Lowen muttered thoughtfully.
“And yet Neolone would not …” Torrullin said.
Elianas interrupted. “That dragon did not mention a bridge. Lowen did.” Inhaling deeply, he added, “But Neolone may have a starting point I am able to use.”
Lowen shoved her chair back and rose. “Thrice present? Are we going in to at least talk to Neolone?’
Torrullin too stood, heading for the door. “In a while. I am going for a walk first.” He left without looking back.
They heard the front door slam moments later.
“What’s bitten him?” Lowen demanded.
Elianas stared into his mug. “It cannot be easy for him. He misses that bloody dragon. Seeing Neolone again after what happened between them will be …”
“Agony.”
Elianas lifted his head. “That is the least of it.” He rose to gather dishes. “Let us clean up.”
Chapter 27
You don’t need wings to fly, friend. You need only to wish it.
~ Tattle’s scribe ~
Luvanor
Lowen’s cottage
AS DUSK FELL THEY gathered in Lowen’s bedroom, sitting facing each other cross-legged on her soft rug.
Linking hands, they glanced at each other. Lowen with questions in her eyes, Elianas presenting a grim countenance, and Torrullin without expression.
“Can you do this?” Lowen said, squeezing Torrullin’s hand. “It’s Neolone, after all.”
He snorted. “What can that dragon do to me now that he hasn’t already? I am fine. Focus, Lowen; take us in.”
Her eyes narrowed and she shifted her attention to Elianas. “Why are you so forbidding?”
He blinked. “Am I? Forgive me, I am merely gathering the energy required for an unlimited conduit.”
“Unlimited?” Torrullin barked.
Elianas shrugged. “Not quite, but it will feel that way. I need extraordinary length in order to twist it to demands.” He glanced at Lowen. “I am ready.”
Shaking her head, she muttered a while before firmly gripping their hands. “Don’t move,” she warned.
They did not.
Vision Tree
AS IN THE NOWHERE Sphere and again in the night just passed, Lowen climbed a gentle green hill to a lone tree perched on a level area at the apex.
Once Caballa had accompanied her to a meeting with Ixion, Adagin and Neolone, but it was more usual for her to go in alone, and recently only the Dragon waited for her; Ixion and Adagin had now entered realms beyond time and place and could no longer be recalled or summoned to any type of gathering those of the present would recognise.
This occasion, however, Elianas and Torrullin were with her. While she had certainly endured visions with them as visitors in her sightings, this was the first time they actively walked the path into a place of her choosing.
In her bedroom they clasped hands; here independent action could not sever that hold. To that end, as she climbed she released their hands, for she sensed the reluctance in them. Both had now marked the expectant form of a colossal blue Dragon pacing around the tree. His scaled size dwarfed the only natural feature in this landscape.
Neither uttered a word. She did not glance back to check on them, but was aware that they followed. Neolone halted and his glittering gaze fixated. No doubt on Torrullin, she mused. She heard Torrullin swear under his breath, and then no more.
Moments later she found herself craning her head back to meet Neolone’s reptilian eyes. He did not sever his connection with the fair man, however, and thus she did not speak either, not even in greeting.
Elianas closed in first, shifting past her to lean against the solitary tree. From that sideways vantage he studied the massive Dragon, his lips tightening somewhat. His attention then flicked to Torrullin coming to rest beside Lowen.
Despite his size and what had to be confining armour, Neolone possessed the gift of grace. He lowered his head, put his taloned forepaws together and bowed over them. Then he winked.
Torrullin snorted a laugh and touched his forehead. “I never expected to see you again,” he admitted.
“Likewise,” Neolone responded with amusement in his voice.
Thank Aaru he had chosen to modulate his tones to their ears, Lowen thought. A Dragon could fell someone simply by uttering a single sound, their voices were that overw
helming.
“No ill-will?” Torrullin questioned.
“What would be the advantage in that?” Neolone shrugged. “You won; I lost. No use worrying at a dead scale, after all.”
Lowen noticed how Elianas lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile, and breathed easier herself. If Elianas felt comfortable, there was nothing to fear.
“How long do we have?” she asked of the Dragon.
He deigned to give her attention. “Never long enough, as ever.”
“You understood we required this meeting even before the situation arose,” she went on. “Therefore ‘thrice present’.”
“Time is more malleable here,” Neolone murmured. Abruptly he swung his ponderous form to face Elianas. “You need me. That is what I realised.”
Elianas folded his arms and gave the Dragon a cool look. “You have no idea what I am able to achieve. How would you know I have a need?”
Neolone was unblinking in his perusal. “I know exactly who and what you are. Wings know; it is our binding factor.”
“I have no wings.”
“And Torrullin has divested himself also, I am aware. It does not alter what your flights have wrought within, however.” He moved his head to spear Lowen with one jewelled eye. “Get rid of them, seer, before they consume you.”
Torrullin, nearly paralysed beside Lowen, frowned at Elianas. She nudged him. “He plays games. Relax.”
“No game,” Neolone barked, “but those choices are yours and our time shortens. Speak your need.” The latter was directed towards Elianas again.
“A scale …” Lowen murmured when Elianas simply traded stares with the massive creature.
“Won’t work for what he needs,” Neolone interrupted. “Speak, Danae.”
“A starting point,” Elianas said expressionlessly.
“Excellent. Now say please.”
Torrullin doubled over in laughter. “He will not say please, Dragon!”
When a Kallanon laughs, whether Dragon or Dragonne, it was an amazing sight and sound. It sounded somewhat like laughter, but contained barks and whistles also, and it entirely shook the great scaled form from arrowed tail to the smallest talon. Neolone shuddered into a bout of utter hilarity and his mirth was contagious.
Lore of Sanctum Omnibus Page 212
