by Cassia Meare
License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2021 by Cassia Meare
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Making or distributing copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAP of OTHERWHERE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
MAP of OTHERWHERE
1
Aya had told of the beginning of the world.
She had been as fire in the void, twisting, churning, wanting to form. Over time she had taken shape, and it had hurt. Nemours knew how much, but Mother described it also as a joy.
To become.
From particles burning and melding she had grown into a great dragon, rough-hewn by the collisions of time. Sharp eyes watching the darkness, fire now her breath.
The fire, raging alone, had made clouds, and the clouds made rain. The rain had fallen, sweet, and made a sea. The rain had turned salty with her tears and made more seas.
And from that fire and rain and the very dust of stars Father had formed.
Or so she liked to say.
She described Virso coming together, shaped already like a man. The most beautiful of creatures, with the coldness of the moon on his skin, asleep still in the ether. So enamored was she that she had retreated into her own body and remade herself in his likeness.
The dragon had hardened and cracked, and she had emerged from it with long limbs, awkward for a while, and reached for him. The body, empty, had fallen from her and into the sea.
Aya had taken Virso by the hand and breathed fire and life into him. Their passion had begun.
Beneath them, the gigantic dragon body in the water had petrified and become the world.
Or so she liked to tell. It had always been difficult to catch Mother out of a poetic mood. She was magic, and she liked illusion.
Nemours stood on the map now, etched in precious minerals and stones on the floor of the throne room. Slowly, he followed the dragon’s shape.
If it were a dragon, its snout had stayed open, forming a bay — the same glorious, wide bay he could see through the high windows. The beast’s last breath might have formed Silverburn, a frozen island to the northwest, where savages now dwelt.
Upon the dragon’s eyelid, a hill had risen. Aya and Virso had carved their home from it. High Hall was marked on the map by a sapphire the size of Nemours’ fist.
A hard land had come of the dragon’s head, its spines turning into jagged rocks on a coast that could not be sailed.
Beyond it, a wing had become a great island — Deep Realm, the place where Mother had disappeared, descending to its bowels and leaving zealots and apparitions to protect her temple.
The continent’s neck and torso were meaty, fruitful land, and the jutting back vertebrae the only chain of mountains in the world: Dragonridge.
The upper claws had broken off to the west, forming Ysil, an archipelago said to be the most beautiful place anywhere. It had been Aya’s gift to Nemours when he was still her only child, before Sibulla. There stood a tower to which he still sometimes escaped — sailing the ocean known as Mermaids’ Murmur on his own.
The mermaids had long ago left for the southwest, to around the feet of the dragon. The feet and the beast’s lower belly were places of magic, a lawless stretch where the great sorceress, Sigrit of Inön, gave shelter to the monsters Virso had created.
Virso had made them out of jealousy, resentment, ambition; whatever good ever came of these things?
Nemours walked right over Witchsweep and stood considering what was left.
The south and east loved his sisters. The dragon’s tail had broken off into three islands, where the three daughters of Aya had their homes. Crystal Hold, Ahn’s castle, glimmered on the ground, as subtle as she was.
No, the south and the east would not be for him.
But the very center?
He walked to Stonemount, a rich, powerful land because of its metals and minerals. The greatest knights of all time, men and women, had come from there. And although no war had taken place in a long while, Stonemount people were bred to the shield and sword. They still dealt with the monsters of Dragonridge.
Who would Stonemount choose?
Stonemount alone could decide everything.
Steps outside brought him out of his calculations. The bannermen and women must have arrived, and Nemours was almost ready to meet them.
But he wasn't going into that meeting alone.
"Lord Protector," said his chief of guards, Commander Nader, as he entered. Smarting from the attack of the princesses and from being locked away with the rest of Nemours' guard, the commander bowed. "Lockland and Ashrock are here."
Nader had not been prepared for treason. It hadn’t happened in his lifetime, but the world had just changed.
"Where are they?" Nemours asked.
The man knew he did not mean the banners.
"Your antechamber, lord."
Nemours moved that way. "The guests may wait here."
2
Nemours' boots rang on polished stone as he approached his antechamber, Azure by his side. The panther wouldn't leave him for a while. She was even more outraged by the treachery of his sisters than the commander.
Two guards opened the doors and closed them after he passed. Inside, Delian paced the balcony while Ty perched on the arm of a chair, nervously fidgeting with his glasses. They stood rooted to the ground when Nemours entered.
"Why ... why are we here, lord?" Delian asked, somewhere between apprehension and defiance.
He would always be the first to speak; he reall
y could not stand to leave things unsaid, but that was often good.
"I thought we were going to be thrown into filthy dungeons," he added.
Nemours scoffed. "Do you want to be?"
"No, but—what are we doing here, in your room?"
"You're here because you're my brother, that's why," Nemours said, cuffing him lightly on the head as he passed. "Time you remembered and got back to normal."
He walked on to Ty and gently removed his glasses, throwing them down on the table. "You too, little one."
The Lord Protector refrained from rolling his eyes as Delian squeaked, "Nemours! You rat."
The spell was already unweaving. Delian ran to the mirror and touched his face, inspecting it with horror. Even as he pulled at it, his features began to change.
"I can't believe you made me look like crap," Delian complained. "You're a criminal."
Nemours only glanced at Ty, whose face was changing as well. He was growing taller and stronger. As Atra Ve Hasis had promised before dying, the spells he had cast were not proving difficult to reverse.
Pointing to the balcony and more softly than Delian, Ty said, "I was looking outside and thinking it all felt familiar."
"Clothes were brought for you," Nemours said, motioning to two tidy piles on a divan. Ty's raven was embroidered on his doublet and Delian's horse on his.
That Ty should return to his original shape faster than Delian was expected. Ty would let things fall back into place. He was the youngest and wisest of them all.
"This stupid nose I had to stare at every day." Delian pulled at the offending appendage without minding for the moment that his clothes had begun to rip. "This lipless mouth! You made me look like a potato."
Nemours sat on the divan, his arm along the back. "If you were going around as gorgeous as you are, our sisters would have been on to you like flies to honey. And you've seen what that's like." His voice had grown frostier at the mention of his sisters. "As it is, they've forgotten you even exist."
"And my family?" Ty asked, his eyes lost. "On Earth? I had a family and loads of memories."
"You talked about your mother all the time," Delian recalled. "She sounded like a right pain."
Ty shook his head. "It felt so real, and now it’s all vanishing. From my emotions, anyway."
"I wonder whether that family was any better than this one," Nemours said.
"I didn’t even get a family, come to think of it. And you people never asked me about my life." Pulling off his doublet and shirt, which were fast becoming too small for him, Delian faced Nemours, quite naked. "Did you discuss any of this with us beforehand?"
"Don't you remember?" Nemours asked with an ambiguous smile.
Now Delian gasped, remembering something else. "You made me call you lord."
A giggle emerged from Ty as Delian pointed an accusing finger at the Lord Protector.
"You made me clean your boots!"
Nemours joined Ty in open laughter as Delian's eyes, still round, popped in indignation. He donned his breeches, grimacing still, as Ty took a seat in his change of clothes, almost himself again.
But when Delian moved away from the mirror and sat with them, he looked so deformed that his brothers couldn't stop laughing. Nemours, however, grabbed his arm when he tried to stand and run to the mirror again.
"We need to discuss serious things now," he said.
"Do we?" Delian asked, his hands splayed over his face to hide the awkward phases of the spell’s end.
"I'm assuming you do remember what happened?"
"We wanted to save Earth," Ty stated. "Atra ran a Change spell to keep Ahn from us, so we could search for the clues."
"I went with you," Delian said, indicating Nemours. He added, pointing at Ty, "And what about you?"
"He went through the crack," Nemours said.
"I was there a while; I remember now. I figured out Canterbury, read the clue and did not take Protection. Figured out Richard III next, went there, got the next clue and then it all went blank. I guess that's when Oblivion kicked in and I became Wei Tian."
"Ha! You were the backup," Delian said with satisfaction.
"How is someone who goes before the backup?" Ty asked with a mild lifting of eyebrows.
"You were sitting there waiting for us. In that office."
"Unless we didn’t show up," Nemours said. "In which case the spell would eventually unravel, and he would have gone on without us."
"How is that not a backup?" Delian insisted.
Ignoring Delian, Ty looked at Nemours. "You specifically mentioned you might be bound."
Silence fell as the younger brothers remembered it was Elinor who had figured out the clue to Binding and run the spell. They did not speak of her yet, and it was just as well.
Worried by a more pressing thought, Ty frowned. "You're not going to let this escalate, will you?"
"Depends," Nemours said, taking the silver jug that was currently serving as a mirror for Delian from his hands and setting it back on the table.
"Depends on what?" Ty asked.
Delian gave a short laugh. "On whether Ahn obeys him now, of course. And apologizes."
"I can do without the apology," Nemours said. "But I want the obedience."
"Uh-oh," Ty said, throwing him a look.
Nemours ignored it. "First I'm going to see where we stand with everyone here."
"The mortals?"
Nemours nodded.
"But that's almost like preparing for a fight," Ty said. "Shouldn't we hold a meeting with our sisters and see where talking can get us?"
"The fact that Ahn tried binding me shows an unwillingness to accept that there is another way of surviving than to cut off Earth," Nemours said. "The same unwillingness she showed before, and a readiness to be underhanded about it."
"We can still try," Ty urged.
"We have tried. I skulked around on Earth like a miserable thief, running and hiding so we could try this without hurting each other. She won’t want to help us get the hekas; she wants to stop us first."
"We do have advantages," Delian said. "They’re not on Earth as often."
"If we show that we have progressed," Ty insisted. "That we can do this together …"
"Don’t you see?" Nemours said. "She is convinced that at the end of all this the price for two worlds will be too high."
"And I seem to remember," Delian said, closing one eye, "that we don’t necessarily disagree with that."
"No," Nemours said.
"Good to know." Delian scoffed and nodded wryly. At a look from his brothers, he held up two palms. "I’m not one to back away from a fight, you know that. It’s just—"
Again, he grimaced. It’s just that it’s magic. Delian wasn’t a coward, except where Aya was involved.
"We should not lose Earth," Ty said, as if renewing a vow.
Nemours said, "And we should show a united front on this. The lords and ladies are almost all here. Some will swear blind allegiance to us. Some will not be happy that we want to save another world and leave ours in danger. I can imagine a split, with the north being for us and the south for our sisters."
Ty leaned forward. "By meeting with the banners, we will be alluding to the possibility of a civil war among immortals."
"Perhaps we will be avoiding it," Nemours said. "It’s my intention, anyway. We have disagreed on something which is of everyone’s interest, and our sisters should know what the majority think."
"But how can that stop them from trying to stop us?" Ty wondered.
Nemours stood and walked to the balcony. Slowly, his brothers joined him. Below High Hall, in the Prime Temple, priests and priestesses danced on the flat roof around a column with the golden figure of Aya holding a female and a male child. Or rather, they twirled around themselves and then around the column with their eyes closed, never ceasing the movement. Their long robes — white for women and black for men — were a contrast to the blue, red and golden domes in the city.
"L
ook at them — turning and turning to pacify Mother because one day she might come back," Nemours said.
"It's just a ritual to keep their fear at bay," Ty said.
"Doesn't work for me," Delian mumbled.
Of all Aya’s children, Nemours had defied her the most. He had killed Virso and Ydin, her husband and her son.
He should not forget how much she had begged him: Not Virso …
All her children might perish, but not Virso, he thought with contempt. She had never punished Nemours for it, but neither had they ever spoken again. He did not care; there was nothing good he wished to say to her.
"If she ever returns, it's not dancing, burning sweetscent or blabbering in tongues that will pacify her. And if Ahn wants to win with most of this world against her, then she will have to resort to magic. She will have to do it here, and then I will have forced her to disobey Mother." Nemours’ lips twisted in a bitter smile. "I wonder if she will go that far."
"Ahn had a duplicate made of me," Delian said. He waved a hand. "Of ugly-me. It was living in closets, eating my honey, and scrying for her."
Nemours scowled. "Spying and crawling around. Getting lovelorn priests to cheat for her. I despise her for it."
"Nemours …" Ty admonished softly.
The Lord Protector turned back into the room, knowing he should listen to Ty, but his anger, once roused, was not quick to subside. He poured three cups of wine.
"At least I commit," he said. "I've used magic here. You brought a witch from Earth who did magic on my behalf. I won’t deny what I’ve done."
At the mention of "witch," his brothers sent him a look.
"The magic business ..." Delian let his words trail as he picked up his cup and took a long sip. He had finally grown serious.
Nemours shrugged. "I don't plan to use any more of it here, not if there is a clean argument going on."
"A clean fight, I think you mean?" Delian asked.
"Let's avoid a fight, please," Ty said, troubled. He looked inside his own cup, swirling the wine pensively. "Let's just not fight. What is the use? We are trying to save two worlds, not kill our people."
