Shards of Time

by Lynn Flewelling

  Thero turned to him, pale green eyes hard and angry. “If it was Alec trapped there, would you say the same?”

  Seregil met his gaze steadily, grim as death. “No, I’d be the one sitting over there with my head in my hands, and you’d be saying those words to me.”

  Micum returned with a handful of swan wing feathers. Alec followed with a bundle of new arrow shafts, his leather tack bag, a glue pot, and a small length of board. He laid out his materials on the floor by the fire and sat down to begin on the arrows. Laying out the swan feathers, he took out a small fletcher’s knife from his tack and began splitting and shaping them on the board.

  “Micum, collect the swords,” said Thero. “Here on the table, please.”

  Micum laid them there, and Thero worked up some ink using a metal scraper and water on the inkstone. When he had enough, he chose a fine brush and began inscribing the spell on the blade of Micum’s sword, concentrating on the words, seeing them in silver script in his mind’s eye.

  He did the same with Alec’s sword and Seregil’s. It took several hours to get it right. When he finished he looked around and found Seregil and Micum snoring softly in their chairs. Alec, however, had been busy. A considerable number of freshly fletched arrows lay on the floor in front of him.

  “These just have to cure. Should I do more?” Alec asked.

  “How many do you have?”

  Alec counted them. “Sixteen.” He looked up at Thero. “I wasn’t really counting as I worked, but that’s four times four.”

  “Yes, that does seem like an auspicious sign. Leave it at that, Alec. If I know you, you’ll only need one to do the job anyway. In the heart, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “You should sleep now. It will take me some time to put the magic on them.”

  When the others woke at dawn, Thero was still painting symbols on a white-fletched arrow. The table was piled with others, most of the shafts covered in the same intricate symbols. They’d all been fitted with arrowheads made of gold.

  Alec picked one up and inspected it more closely. The barbed arrowhead was covered in a fine tracery of silver symbols, and the edges were razor-sharp. “Did you make this, Thero?”

  “Yes, using coin gold. If these don’t stop her, then I don’t know what will.”

  Seregil went to one of the tall windows and looked out over the sea, where whitecaps were rolling across the grey-green water under a lowering sky. “Looks like a perfect day to go kill a dyrmagnos, eh? How shall we go about it?”

  “It all depends on me getting to Klia,” said Alec. “We have to be ready for when she breaks the seal.”

  “Hold on,” said Seregil. He left the room, returning quickly with parchment, pen, and ink. “We need to know exactly how things are laid out in the caves, Alec.”

  Alec took pen in hand and sketched out the large cave on the other plane, the spot where the seal was, and the tunnel that led outside. “It’s about thirty or so feet from the opening.”

  “You’ll have to be inside the tunnel to see what’s at the end of it, with the light behind you.”

  “Which means he’ll be visible,” said Thero.

  “Not if I’m on my belly until the last minute,” said Alec. “Besides, the dyrmagnos will probably be too occupied with Klia and the seal to notice me.”

  “You can’t count on that,” Thero warned. Taking the pen, he drew the third cave just touching the one Alec had drawn. “Assuming that they are joined, as they were in my vision, then we should be nose-to-nose with Rhazat and Klia when the seal is broken and our plane opens to the other. And our cave here …” He drew in the narrow tunnel that connected the third cave to the second. “The only ways out are back through this bottleneck, or forward, charging her.”

  “Or rather, driving her,” said Seregil. “Alec is our first line of attack. Until he weakens her with the arrows, we may not be much good against her.”

  “If I manage to hit her heart, that should be pretty much the end of her,” said Alec.

  “It didn’t work that way last time,” Micum reminded them. “We still had to hack Irtuk Beshar to pieces. That’s a rotten business and if you don’t remember, I’ll show you the scars on my leg.”

  “I’ll aim for her heart,” Alec assured him. “I’ve got sixteen arrows and if I can, I’ll put every damn one of them into that bitch.”

  “We’re still assuming that Klia will agree to break the seal,” Micum reminded them. “Who’s to say she won’t order us to leave her there and reseal the plane?”

  “I’ll just have to convince her,” said Alec.

  “You might need help doing that.” Seregil turned to Thero. “Perhaps a letter from you?”

  “I composed one last night.” He took a wax-sealed letter from his coat pocket and gave it to Alec. “Whatever happens, she must have this.”

  Alec tucked it away in his coat. “The only problem is, I can’t guarantee when I’ll find her again. She said she’d go to the cave every day, but who knows if she’ll be able to or not?”

  “That means we’ll have to be ready and waiting, no matter what,” said Micum. “Once we’re in place, we’ll stay there until you and Klia come through. Only problem is, I don’t fit down the tunnel to the painted cave.”

  “That’s easily fixed,” said Thero.

  “Yes, but then what?” asked Alec. “We’re assuming that the magic on the arrows won’t work until the other plane is breached—”

  “And I sincerely hope we’re right about that,” said Seregil.

  “Even if it’s instant, the portal between her plane and ours will be open before I can get off a shot, leaving the three of you to face her unprotected.”

  “I took that into consideration.” Thero took up the pen again and drew a wavering line between the two caves, and another at the mouth of the tunnel leading up from the painted cave to the second. “Here, and here, I plan to lay down a defensive magic she shouldn’t be able to cross, or at least not without expending a significant amount of her strength. If she recognizes what it is, she’s more likely to turn and run toward you, Alec.”

  “Making her a better target,” he replied with a dark grin.

  “Timing is everything in love and war,” said Seregil. “Either you stop her or she’ll fly straight for her tower. The last thing I want to do is have to hunt her in there, on her own ground. Not to mention the fact that if she gets that far, Alec will most likely be dead.”

  “What do we do with the parts of her?” asked Micum.

  “We must contain the head and hands. I’ll bring containers for them. The rest I’ll try to burn,” Thero replied.

  “Ah, you and fire,” Seregil said with a chuckle.

  Thero smiled. “You get ready. I need a few hours to prepare and sleep, then we’ll go.”

  Seregil sat on the bed, watching as Alec unlocked the ferrule in the handgrip of the Radly and pulled the two halves apart. He wrapped them with a well-waxed bowstring, then laid them and his quiver in the center of a small blanket and rolled them up into what appeared to be a traveler’s bundle secured with twine. Dressed in his rags again, Alec wrapped his sword belt around his slim hips, put on a cloak to hide the blade, and slung the bundle over his shoulder.

  “Do I look sufficiently harmless?” he asked, striking a stooped pose.

  Seregil smiled. “The real question, I suppose, is do you look sufficiently ghostly?”

  “I must. No one has bothered me there except for the occasional dra’gorgos since that first night.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “A little,” Alec admitted. “I don’t think the ghosts really notice me.”

  “It just makes me wonder how much control the dyrmagnos has over her realm. Or is it you? Can’t she see you?”

  “Why wouldn’t she be able to? She saw Mika well enough.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t die completely the way you did.” Alec raised a brow. “He didn’t die enough?”

&nb
sp; “You know what I mean. There’s something not right about this.”

  “What choice do we have, though?”

  “Not one I dislike any less than this.”

  Micum and Thero were waiting for them downstairs, dressed like Seregil in plain clothing borrowed from among the other ’faie living at Mirror Moon. A laden cart stood outside the front door, and Alec climbed in and took the reins. The others mounted their horses, and together they set off for the oracle’s cave.

  They stopped outside the sacred grove. Alec went ahead to make sure they were alone.

  “I’ll go see to the tunnel while you bring the supplies up,” said Thero.

  By the time the others had emptied the wagon of a week’s worth of food and other supplies and carried them to the first cave, Thero had widened the tunnel for Micum and there was a considerable pile of new sand in the painted cave. Alec helped move the supplies down there, then bid them farewell. Seregil followed him up to the outer cave, wrapped his arms around him, and held him tight.

  “Take care, talí.”

  Alec hugged him back, breathing in the clean smell of his lover as he committed that and the feeling of their bodies pressed together to memory. There was no way of telling when they would be together again.

  Or if.

  That possibility hung unspoken around them as they shared a kiss.

  Seregil stepped back, holding Alec by the shoulders for a moment. “Shoot straight, talí.”

  A shiver went up Alec’s spine. Seregil had said those same words to him the first time they’d fought a dyrmagnos. “I will.”

  “Luck in the shadows, Alec.”

  “And in the Light.”

  Alec’s heart ached as he shouldered his heavy pack of food and set off for the palace. He didn’t let himself look back.

  Mika couldn’t sleep the night Master Thero went away with the others. He hadn’t wanted to stay alone in the big room without Master Thero, so the housekeeper let him sleep with Vhadä in his little room upstairs. Vhadä wanted to talk and joke around, but Mika’s heart wasn’t in it.

  “Why are you so worried about your master and his friends?” asked Vhadä. “They’re just up there exploring the caves, right?”

  “I guess so,” Mika replied. He didn’t like lying to his friend.

  “What’s it like in Rhíminee, living with the wizards?”

  Mika described what it was like, leaving home and living in Thero’s tower, but soon realized that Vhadä had gone to sleep while he was talking.

  So he lay in bed, counting his breaths, counting Vhadä’s, counting stars outside the window, until he finally fell into a restless doze.

  Something cold fell on his cheek and he started awake. A woman was leaning over him, and her wet, tangled hair was dripping on him. The night lamp was still burning and he could see she had sea snails for eyes. Little crabs hung from her hair. It was the woman Alec had seen! He wanted to pull the covers over his head, but he couldn’t move, he was so scared. She raised her hand and pointed toward the window then whispered words he didn’t understand. She looked down at him with her seashell eyes, then pointed to the window again, then disappeared. Mika raised a trembling hand to his cheek and felt the wetness there. This wasn’t a dream.

  He waited for a while to make sure she wasn’t coming back, then stole to the window and looked out. From here he could see the round pond and the road. Was there something she wanted him to see?

  After some internal debate, curiosity got the best of him. He pulled on his breeches and slipped out of the bedroom. It was dark in the corridor except for a few night lamps. He looked up and down it for some sign of the ghost, but she was nowhere to be seen. He went downstairs and out to the pond.

  The moon and stars were bright as gems out here in the country. Little peeper frogs, deep-voiced bullfrogs, and sawing crickets filled the air with their songs. Every once in a while he heard the plop of a frog jumping into the water, or the flop of a fish, or the flitter of a bat overhead. Out in the darkness a fox made the sound like a woman screaming that had scared him at the camp until Micum explained what it was. Now he just pictured the fox, wishing it was close enough for him to see it and what it looked like when it made that strange sound.

  Mika had never been outside all alone in the country before. He sat by the water’s edge, hugging his knees and feeling the grass under his bare toes.

  A bullfrog croaked right in front of him and he started, surprised. The frog splashed away, sprinkling his toes with water. When he looked up again, there was someone standing in the road, clearly visible to Mika. It was the mute ghost boy he’d met by the river. Happy and relieved to see him, Mika waved. The boy waved back. No, he was waving for Mika to come over. Mika had no reason to be afraid of him, so he walked down to the road to see what he wanted.

  “I know you’re a ghost, but I don’t mind,” Mika told him. He wasn’t sure if the boy ghost understood him, though. He tried to take Mika’s hand, but his fingers went through Mika’s like a faint breeze. In the other plane they’d played and wrestled, but here he really was a ghost. Mika still wasn’t scared, though, just a little disappointed. It would make it harder to play.

  “Come see the pond and the frogs,” he said, but the boy shook his head and pointed up the road, toward Menosi.

  “I can’t go with you tonight,” Mika explained. “Master Thero wants me to stay here, and besides it’s too far.”

  The boy looked impatient, and pointed again.

  “Who are you talking to, Mika?”

  Startled again, Mika turned to find Vhadä at the edge of the pond in his nightshirt. When Mika turned to introduce the mute boy, he was gone.

  He walked back to join his alive friend. “You didn’t see the ghost?”

  “She’s never out here,” Vhadä replied.

  “No, not the ghost lady in the house. My friend I met—” It occurred to Mika that the planes and ghosts at Menosi were really a secret. So once again, he had to lie. “I saw a ghost boy by the road just now but he’s disappeared.”

  “You were talking like you knew him.”

  “Well, yes. I met him when we were at the camp. I found him by the river.”

  “And you can talk to him? Does he answer you?”

  “He can’t talk.”

  “But he came all the way down here to find you? I guess you must be friends.” Vhadä sounded a little jealous.

  “Do you ever see the drowned lady ghost?” Mika asked, more anxious to change the subject than curious.

  “Sometimes. I saw her one night in the kitchen after everyone had gone to bed. She’s scary looking but she didn’t hurt me. Is your friend scary?”

  “No, he’s nice. But he’s gone now.”

  “Oh,” said Vhadä, clearly disappointed. “Hey, since we’re out here do you want to see a big owl?”

  “Yes!”

  They walked to an oak tree in a field behind the house and saw two white owls as big as Seregil’s cat sitting on a branch, with huge eyes like shiny gold coins. Vhadä taught Mika how to hoot so that they would answer, and Mika taught Vhadä the polite, reverent way to speak to an owl, hand on heart. Vhadä liked that, and Mika was surprised to learn that the boy knew almost nothing about Illior, even that the owl was Illior’s bird.

  They went back to bed after that and Mika tried to go to sleep, but it was a long time coming.

  “You’re looking peaked, Mika,” Sabriel said when he and Vhadä came into the kitchen in search of breakfast. “Come sit by the fire and I’ll warm some milk and honey for you.”

  “I’m all right,” Mika replied, not wanting to be babied.

  “Well, come and have some oatcakes and milk, then, and I won’t take no for an answer. I have some boiled eggs, too.”

  “I like those!” said Vhadä.

  She fixed plates for the two of them and watched fondly as they ate. Mika could tell she still thought he might be sick. The truth was, he didn’t feel just right. He was worried.

&nb
sp; RHAZAT’S rage had been short-lived. The following morning she’d released Klia from her chamber and invited her down to breakfast. Nothing more was said of strange visitors, and by that Klia knew that the dyrmagnos would most likely keep a closer eye on her.

  For the next two days Klia went to the cave by a different way and waited there for as long as she dared, but there’d been no sign of Alec. Even though he hadn’t been able to get her out, talking with him, knowing the others were at work on their side to figure out a way to save her, gave her the strength and hope to go on. Even so, she kept a fine edge on the gorget blade. She would wait as long as she could, but every day she grew thinner, and tired more easily.

  The kitchen portal brought Alec out in the hills above Zikara. Camouflaged well in his drab clothing, he worked his way down, finally coming across a dirt road. He followed this until he reached a side path, which took him up to a grotesque mockery of the oracle’s precinct. The grove was dead, and beyond it a black altar held a stinking mess of rotting birds and offal; the entrance was through the mouth of a hideous stone head. Alec half expected the jaws to snap shut on him as he ducked inside. Inside was the tunnel Klia had told him of. It ran back into the hillside and was lined with unlit torches. Taking one down, he tried to light it with flint and steel, but after considerable effort and muttering under his breath, he gave up. There was no choice but to go into the darkness. He took off his shoes and padded forward in silence. By the time he’d left the reach of daylight behind, however, he could see a soft glow framed by the end of the tunnel and guessed it was about fifty feet in length. It ran fairly straight. He crept forward cautiously to the mouth of the cave. It was empty except for the unpleasant drawings on the wall. Directly across from the tunnels the black opal glowed in its golden setting, an almost perfect match to the one Seregil had had made.