Shards of Time

by Lynn Flewelling

  “I’ll go get them.” Mika ducked out through the tent flap.

  “And he can keep an eye on you,” Seregil said, kissing Alec and stroking the hair back from his lover’s brow. “I want to examine that corridor where you disappeared—in daylight.”

  “I think I’m up to going,” Alec said, but Seregil placed a gentle hand on his chest when he tried to get up.

  “No, talí. Micum and I can handle this. I need you rested and healed.”

  Micum rose and settled his sword on his hip. “Don’t worry, Alec. I’ll look after him for you.”

  “You have your amulets, don’t you?” asked Alec.

  Seregil and Micum both held theirs up.

  “Good. Don’t ever take them off.”

  “After what we’ve seen and heard?” Micum scoffed. “Just try to get it away from me!”

  THE approach to the palace through Menosi looked no different early the next morning than any other time Seregil had seen it, but now he was on guard. Micum was quiet beside him as they walked through the silent streets to the palace.

  “How is Baron Alec?” asked one of the young guards as they reached the front door.

  “He’s safe back in camp,” Seregil replied, feeling a twinge of unease. Alec was certainly safer there than here, but Seregil was strangely unsettled at being separated though he was in the more dangerous spot.

  Retracing their steps last night, Seregil led Micum through a succession of turns, stopping by the royal chamber on the way. There was no sign of supernatural activity in the morning light, no dark figures.

  Moving on, they finally came to the long corridor where Alec had disappeared. It was perfectly ordinary looking, but the sight of it sent another uneasy twinge through his belly. As he’d noted the night before, it hadn’t yet been repaired. It was lined on one side by rooms—some with the remains of broken doors hanging on sprung hinges or no doors at all—and on the other with small round windows set high overhead, and dead-ended at a stone wall. Traces of painted plaster still clung to walls here and there, their colors leached by time to faded pastels.

  “Where did Alec disappear?” asked Micum.

  “It’s hard to say, exactly. It was dark and we couldn’t see how long the corridor was. We’d just reached the turning here when he took off on his own. And then he was just gone. I checked every room from top to bottom, looking for hidden doors and secret passages. I was still at it when the guard brought word that Alec had turned up out front.” He paused, not liking the memory. “I want another look at the wall at the end. It was as if he ran right through it.”

  “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  The wall was made of large blocks of finished stone fitted together with thin seams of mortar that appeared to have stood the test of time. As Seregil approached it, the uneasy feeling that had been plaguing him grew stronger.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Micum.

  “I’m not sure.” Seregil reached out and pressed his palms against the wall. “There’s just something …”

  Suddenly he was overwhelmed with images: visions of Alec fading away through walls and forests and around corners; mud that caught his feet; locks that bit his fingers …

  Gasping, Seregil pressed himself against the cold stone, resting his cheek against it as if he were leaking dreams through his skin. As the visions faded back to wherever they’d come from, he felt Micum’s hand gripping his shoulder.

  “Seregil? Seregil, where are you?”

  “My dreams,” he whispered. “I think I just remembered what they were. But he came back!” Micum kept a hold on his shoulder as Seregil passed a hand over his eyes, caught between dread and giddy relief.

  “Last night they came true, when he disappeared and I couldn’t get to him,” he told Micum. “But he came back.”

  “You’re saying he ran through a wall?”

  “Well, he didn’t go out a window. Not even he would fit out one of them.”

  Micum began inspecting the wall on his own, using a lightstone. “There could be a mechanism, something that swung part of this like a door, or made a section of it pivot. We’ve found things like that plenty of times.”

  “I know, and I looked for any sort of device that would operate such a thing, but couldn’t find one.”

  “Let’s see what a pair of fresh eyes can find.” Micum joined him and together they made a methodical search of the wall, pressing on every block, running their fingers along every seam.

  “I guess Thero better have a look,” Seregil said, giving up at last. “Either it’s magic, or someone opened it from the other side.”

  “Or something pulled him away through thin air, like Sedge’s corporal was.”

  “Or that.” Seregil shuddered at the idea of something otherworldly touching Alec. “It couldn’t have been a dra’gorgos. He was wearing his amulet.”

  “Then let’s go with the theory that someone made of flesh and blood got up to mischief. Any idea what’s on the other side?”

  “This place is a labyrinth, but we can try our luck.”

  Marking off paces and counting turnings, they did their best to find their way around the other side of the wall, but it soon proved impossible to keep track. Hours passed and they found many new wings and rooms but not the place they were looking for. Coming out at last in a corridor with windows, they saw that the sun was nearly down.

  “I say we get some workmen in to knock through the wall,” Micum said after they’d managed to get lost yet again, this time in a dusty, cobweb-festooned passageway.

  “That sounds like a fine idea, my friend. Let’s go back and see if Thero has had any inspirations.”

  “And tell him about your dreams.”

  “That, too.”

  They had almost reached the junction of the passageway with another corridor when a dark figure glided across the opening in front of them in the gloom.

  “Hello?” Micum called out, but there was no reply.

  He and Seregil got to the turning in time to catch sight of the figure disappearing into the darkness beyond their lights’ glow. They hurried after it, only to have it suddenly turn to face them. They skidded to a halt, confronted by a pale man with his eyes gouged out. The blood staining his cheeks like tears looked black in the lightstones’ glow. So did his thin lips as he held out a hand, showing them the missing eyeballs.

  “Milia trona?” The thing’s voice was like the whisper of dead leaves.

  “Haln,” Seregil replied.

  The specter grimaced, then threw the eyes at them. Seregil and Micum flinched back and when they looked again, the corridor was empty.

  “I’m certainly getting my wish to see ghosts,” said Micum, looking around for the eyes. “Guess they went with him. What did he say to you? And what language was that?”

  Seregil smiled humorlessly as they started off again. “He asked ‘Can you see?’ I said yes, which must have been the wrong answer, given his reaction. It was Middle Konic again, interestingly enough.”

  “What’s so interesting about it? It was spoken here. It still is.”

  “In a corrupted form. The ghosts speak it perfectly as it was during that period, a long time ago. Odd when there are so many other possibilities from other times, considering this is the place in the Three Lands that has been inhabited for the longest time.”

  “Well, we haven’t met many. At least it wasn’t a dra’gorgos.”

  Seregil arched a brow at him. “We have protection from those, not from ghosts.”

  “Most ghosts aren’t likely to do us any harm.”

  “It’s the exceptions that get you.”

  “Any way to tell the difference?” asked Micum.

  “Not that I know of, until it’s too late.” Seregil strode ahead into the darkness.

  Thero was still in his tent when Seregil and Micum returned. Alec and Mika sat outside by a watch fire, eating something from bowls. Alec was wearing a loose tunic under his cloak; only a fresh bandage on his lef
t hand was visible.

  “You must be feeling better, talí,” said Seregil, bending down to kiss him on the top of the head.

  “I am, considerably.”

  “What’s for supper?” asked Micum.

  Mika made a face. “Bean soup. I hate bean soup!” Then with a giggle, “It makes me fart.”

  Micum ruffled the boy’s hair. “Me, too. Could be a noisy night.”

  Seregil smirked. “You know, Mika, I don’t think I’ve ever known your Master Thero to fart.”

  The others dissolved into laughter at that.

  “The level of discourse seems to have devolved considerably today,” Thero observed dryly, pushing back the tent flap.

  “Sorry,” Alec said, then broke out laughing again.

  It was music to Seregil’s ears, after the condition he’d found the younger man in yesterday.

  Thero sighed and waved them inside. “I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. There was a time when Seregil would have made several comments on the condition of my sphincter by now.”

  “ ‘Better up than down. Saves wear and tear on the—’ Well, on the sphincter, my old gran used to say,” Micum offered, sending Alec into another fit of laughter.

  “What’s a sphincter?” Mika wanted to know.

  “Where the farts come out,” Thero replied crisply. “Now, can we please get to the business at hand?”

  “Me, too, Master Thero?” asked Mika.

  “You, too.”

  Seregil and Alec took one cot, so Mika shared the other with Thero. Micum took the chair by the desk.

  “How did the meditation go?” Seregil asked.

  “You first,” said Thero. “Did you find anything?”

  “An empty corridor, a solid stone wall, and a blind ghost who threw his eyeballs at us,” Seregil replied.

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “Did you catch the eyes?” asked Mika.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Micum. “Otherwise I’d have brought them back for you to play marbles with.”

  “Ghost eyeballs! I wish you could have gotten them. And I’d like to see a ghost.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” warned Alec.

  “The corridor?” Thero prompted impatiently.

  “There was no sign of how Alec could have gotten out of the palace past the wall at the end of the corridor, and we couldn’t find any sort of device,” said Seregil.

  “Might be worth knocking through it to see what’s on the other side,” said Micum. “If we can get any workmen to come back, that is.”

  “I sent a messenger to Deep Harbor while you were gone, asking for a party of workmen to be sent up,” said Thero. “I expect we’ll hear back from Klia in the morning. In the meantime, I have a theory about what happened to you, Alec. At first I thought it was a translocation magic of some sort, something I hadn’t heard of. But then I had to consider your report that the dogs didn’t bleed and the water wasn’t wet. That suggests you may have been somehow pulled into another plane.”

  “A what?” asked Micum.

  “That’s not easy to explain.” Thero paused, then held up his hands, palms facing each other a few inches apart. “Imagine that my right hand is our plane, where we exist. My left hand is a different plane, where we do not exist, but other people or creatures do, who do not exist in our world. Certain kinds of very difficult magic can build a sort of bridge between the two, and beings can cross from one place to the other.” He touched the tips of his forefingers together.

  “Like Seregil did to himself,” Alec said.

  Seregil looked at him in surprise. “How do you know about that? I’ve never mentioned it to anyone.”

  “Nysander told me. It was that first time we went to the Orëska House, when you were so sick.”

  All eyes turned to Seregil.

  “When was this?” asked Micum.

  “A very long time ago. I was trying to do some spell, and it went badly wrong, as most magic does with me.”

  “What was it like?”

  “I don’t remember much about it, except that it was the thing that ended my apprenticeship with Nysander.” He shrugged, then added pointedly, “That’s why I don’t talk about it.”

  Thero graciously changed the subject. “There are planes without number, or so Nysander believed.”

  “Have you ever crossed over?” asked Seregil.

  “No. He refused to teach me how to work with them.”

  “So if I understand you correctly our plane and some other one touched long enough for me to cross over?” said Alec. “How is that even possible?”

  Thero shrugged. “I wish I knew. Given the presence of dra’gorgos, though, and whatever that was that attacked me when I cleansed Sedge, I do believe a necromancer is somehow involved.”

  “What’s your opinion on Doctor Kordira these days?” asked Seregil.

  “I don’t know. If she is one, then she’s powerful enough to cloak her magic, which does not bode well for us. She is charming, though, and that puts me on my guard.”

  “She could just be charming,” said Micum. “Not that I’m defending her, but I have a pretty good sense for people and she struck me as being just what she appears to be.”

  “When it comes to this sort of creature, it’s best not to be too trusting.”

  “Assuming that you’re right about this plane thing, Thero, what do we do now?” asked Alec.

  “I’ll investigate the corridor where you disappeared.”

  “The question is, why did I pass over, and not Seregil? Or he and Micum today? And how did I get back?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping to learn. Can you describe where you went again, in all the detail you can recall?”

  Alec shrugged. “It looked like Kouros. The sky was clouded over so I couldn’t see the stars, or the sun when it came up. I had a hard time getting my bearings. Other than that, and the language, everything was like here—cottages, dogs, people, the town, the river …” He thought for a moment. “Let’s see, what else? Just what I told you about the dogs and water, and the fire. It was all like a nightmare.”

  “Speaking of nightmares, Seregil, tell them what you told me,” said Micum.

  He sighed. “Seeing the corridor where Alec disappeared in daylight today must have shaken something loose in my brain. I think I remembered what my nightmares have been about, or at least enough pieces to know that they were about losing you, Alec. I have fragmented flashes of you walking away ahead of me, always out of reach, and disappearing. Just like you did last night.”

  “Interesting,” mused Thero. “I don’t recall you saying anything about dreams when you two were enslaved in Plenimar, or before Alec died.”

  “Not this kind of dream,” Seregil said, tapping his lower lip with a finger thoughtfully. “They were more …” He stopped, staring at Alec.

  “What?”

  “Remember what the ghost at Mirror Moon said to you?”

  Comprehension dawned on Alec’s face. “The same thing that the demon in Sedge said to you. Only the dead can walk with the—”

  “Dead,” Seregil finished for him. “You’re the only one here who died and came back. Thero, could that be the key?”

  Thero considered it. “It’s possible. It fits. There’s only one way to test it, I’m afraid.”

  “I have to go back, don’t I?” said Alec.

  “No!” Seregil rose to his feet. “What if he’s not so lucky this time? What if he doesn’t come back? That’s what my dreams were telling me.”

  “Couldn’t we take some sort of precautions?” asked Alec. “Like the dra’gorgos charm?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Thero murmured.

  “You’d better meditate damn hard on that one!” Seregil growled.

  “I’ve never encountered anything quite like this,” the wizard told him. “I’m afraid it will have to be trial and error.”

  “Trial and—”

  “It’s all right, Seregil,” said Alec.
“If I go in the same way, I should be able to get out the same way, too. Thero?”

  “Plausible, but not proven.”

  “Exactly,” said Seregil. “In those dreams, I couldn’t get to you, no matter what I did.”

  “You didn’t need to, apparently,” Alec pointed out. “I got back on my own. And this may be the key to finding out what happened to Toneus and the duchess. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  “We can begin by knocking down that wall, whenever the workmen get here,” said Micum.

  “I might be able to do something about that in the meantime,” said Thero.

  “I’m going with you.” Alec was not about to take no for an answer.

  “You’re not even healed up yet,” said Seregil, but he knew it was a losing battle.

  “I’ll be fine as long as I don’t go down the corridor.”

  “That’s certainly a precaution we need to take,” the wizard replied.

  “What about tying a rope around him and one of us, just to be sure?” asked Micum.

  “Also a good idea.”

  “What about me?” asked Mika, who’d been silently taking all this in. “Please, Master Thero, can’t I come with you this time?”

  Seregil could see the boy holding his breath as Thero considered the request.

  At last the wizard gave a grudging nod. “I suppose so, as long as you stay close by me. No wandering off this time.”

  Solemnly Mika covered his heart with his left hand. “By Illior’s Light, I promise. Thank you, Master.”

  “We’ll see if you feel so thankful once a ghost starts chucking eyeballs at you,” Micum said with a grin.

  “We’ll go tomorrow morning,” said Thero.

  Mika looked crestfallen. “But there won’t be any ghosts then.”

  “There could be,” Alec told him. “And you’ll be able to see them better in daylight.”

  “Really?”

  “Tomorrow,” Thero said, settling the matter.

  Neither Rhazat or Lady Zella appeared at breakfast the following morning, but the table was set and delicious smells rose from the covered dishes arranged there. The food was again to Klia’s taste, as if Rhazat had once more pulled that knowledge from her mind.