It was impossible not to notice neither of them had touched whatever was in those cordial glasses yet.
She couldn’t give even more of her suspicion away now by trying to investigate her own glass. So she scowled at the magicals instead and cocked her head. “What’s really going on here?”
Leandras didn’t move a muscle, sitting there like a statue etched in perfect detail but somehow missing that extra spark of life. “Merely a discussion, Jessica.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Railen snapped. “That’s not even the least of what this is. Have you been attending the Guardian with these blatant redefinitions the whole time?”
“I simply—”
“Yes,” Jessica snapped. “He has.”
The mage scowled at Leandras, but when he looked quickly up at Jessica again, all trace of his frustration disappeared, and the smile returned. “Come, Jessica. Apparently, we have much more to discuss than I expected.”
Warring between more confidence-shattering suspicion and the kind of undeniable curiosity she hadn’t felt tugging at her in quite some time, Jessica approached the circle of cushions around the low table and took her seat. Fortunately, there was enough space to put an equal amount of distance between her and the two men intently watching her. This way, she could keep an eye on both of them without looking like she’d aligned herself with either one.
Because once more, now that she was here, she had absolutely no idea which one of them she could fully trust—if she could trust either of them.
“Wonderful. Now.” Railen lifted his cordial glass, and the colored lantern light from the tent’s ceiling illuminated the amber liquid inside the thin frosted glass etched with swirling lines of gold. “To Ahárra.”
“Ahárra,” Leandras muttered, raising his glass in the same way. They both stared expectantly at Jessica.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
The mage briefly closed his eyes in frustration. “You really haven’t told her a thing, have you?”
Leandras ignored him. “Not a who, Jessica. A...where, if you will.”
“No.” She shook her head and set the fragile glass on the table. “I’m not going anywhere else. Both of you have told me more than once that we’re here to talk. To tell me what the hell we’re actually doing here in the first place if we’re not snatching artifacts from pissed-off magicals or dancing around a fire. That’s the deal.”
“We’ll stay in this tent for as long as you like,” the fae replied, his eyes pulsing with a silver glow. “Or until we’re all fully satisfied.”
“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Jessica pointed at the fae. “Telling me what I want to hear before you turn it completely on its head to make it look like an option. I’m not buying it—”
“Jessica.” Railen leaned forward over the table and held her gaze. “Physically, yes. We remain where we are the entire time. But the nature of our communion here, tonight, is of the utmost importance. Ahárra seals the remaining gaps in what protection we can provide you here. And I will say those gaps have grown over the last few millennia.”
“So it’s a spell.” Jessica stared at the cordial glass she didn’t in the slightest want to touch again. “I don’t remember having to drink a spell to perform it.”
“It loosens the mind,” Leandras added. “Whatever forces the Dalu’Rázj has set against us even in the Laenmúr’s presence, Ahárra will stave them off. For a time.”
“One never can be too careful.” Railen nodded and shot the fae man a quick sidelong glance. “Isn’t that right?”
“I’d call it an accurate statement.” The muscles of Leandras’ jaw worked visibly as he stared at Jessica.
He didn’t look anywhere close to being as convinced of his own words as he wanted Jessica to believe. Which made it that much more ridiculous that he thought he could convince her himself.
But what other option did she have right now? Refuse to drink, refuse to enter communion with these two Xaharí magicals, and run out of the tent right now to do what? Dance the endless night away?
The second the thought entered her mind, a knot of dread and more than a little fascination tightened in her gut. How the hell she knew this, she had no idea. But the certainty overwhelmed her with as much force as a bolt of light ripping through the tent’s ceiling to crash-land in front of her and scream the truth in her face.
If she refused to dive down this rabbit hole right here, right now, and abandoned these next unknown steps because she was too afraid to face her own cluelessness, she would be dancing that endless night away. A night that would never end.
The Guardian would be stuck here for eternity—maybe enjoying the party that never stopped and never started in this Laenmúr clearing, maybe occasionally recognizing it for what it was and understanding the horror of it without being able to do a single thing about it.
Because that was what the Laenmúr had been doing for the last few millennia and who knew how much longer, wasn’t it?
The original Order were trapped here too, stuck in an endless loop while the Dalu’Rázj ravaged this world now trying to ravage her own. And if this Ahárra was the way to escape safely, for a time, Jessica fully intended to figure out why the hell this had happened in the first place.
Chapter 4
Jessica snatched up the cordial glass, which now felt too fragile to even use in her fingers, and stared unwaveringly at Leandras’ silver-glowing eyes. Then she lifted it just as they had and muttered, “To Ahárra.”
Railen nodded curtly, and they drank.
It couldn’t have been more than a shot’s worth of amber liquid, whatever it was, but the force of it hitting her tongue was like nothing she’d ever experienced.
She could taste light. Magic burst and crackled within her, washing through every vein in Jessica’s body and filling her with the brightness of damp earth and clear skies. She heard silver and gold, smelled the softness of the cushions beneath her, and at first didn’t even consider how completely weird it was that all her senses had jumbled together to reveal sensations that didn’t belong to them.
Then it hit her how powerful this damn drink really was.
With a gasp, Jessica lurched forward, her eyes flying open again as her own body moved against her will and still didn’t move at all. Like she’d been lying on her back on the ground this whole time and had only just discovered how to fully sit upright. Except she’d always been sitting.
Blinking quickly and feeling the sound of her own surprise beneath her eyelids—again, super weird—she took in the sight of the tent around her with all its opulent décor and the mysteries contained within them.
“Not a physical place” was right. And wrong. Everything here was physical, and then again, it wasn’t. Or it was so much more than that.
The lanterns suspended from the ceiling flickered in and out between crimson, laughter, purple, and pain. The curio cabinet across the tent stared back at her without judgement, clearly amused. The surface of the low table in front of her sang in high-pitched notes, each line in the grain of wood telling its story in mountains and valleys.
This wasn’t a goddamn spell. She’d been drugged.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, staring at her hands winking back at her. “I definitely didn’t sign up for a giant dose of Ahárra just so I could trip my balls off in the forest.”
“You’ll never pass from this place,” Leandras muttered.
The darkness in his voice was terrifying—not just his voice but a multitude of them, rumbling with threats and deceit and purple veins of hatred, like he’d just spoken through one of those creepy voice-changers.
Jessica looked quickly up at him, her eyes wide as she saw not the fae man as she’d known him but a creature of nightmares, pulsing with black and green that sucked all other light from the tent. Not her nightmares, of course. This wasn’t a Brúkii sitting across the table from her. But someone else’s nightmare? Sure.
“What did you just say?”
The words bubbled out of her in a whisper, trailing from her lips in an undulating whisp of sour decay.
How could she even put all those things together and still sit here like this? She’d never come back from this Ahárra. Or if she did, she’d return to herself complete insane after smelling sounds and tasting light and feeling so much...
Jessica clenched her eyes shut again and shook her head.
“I said it passes quickly.” Leandras’ voice now sounded like it was supposed to, and when she opened her eyes, she found the fae man sitting once more in his place on the cushions.
He looked the same again. He looked like himself. Jessica didn’t even know who the true Leandras really was, but this version of him was a hell of a lot more palatable than what she’d just seen.
No, what she’d thought she’d seen, right?
His silver gaze met hers, and he swallowed thickly before setting the empty cordial glass down on the table. “There.”
Jessica gazed around the tent, and yes, everything had returned to normal. The nonsense filling her mind faded quickly, though her senses were now on intensely high alert. Everything was brighter, illuminated from within by an inner glow that disappeared if she looked at it directly. Despite the shock of the first real hallucinatory hammering she’d had in years, Jessica felt the gently growing waves of peace and safety now thrumming through and around her—the first since she’d stepped through the Gateway.
Maybe even the first since she’d abandoned the name she’d been born with and the life that had come with it.
Yeah. Ahárra was safe, all right. It just took twenty seconds of going through hell to get here first.
Railen’s long, slow exhale through his nose left a fading echo in the air, then the mage opened his eyes as well and set his own glass on the table.
Jessica remembered hers and followed suit, wondering why she had the sudden feeling that if she held it too hard between her fingers or broke it against the tabletop, she’d be shattering so much more than a glass.
“Now.” The mage licked his lips and gazed first at Jessica, then Leandras. “We are linked.”
Jessica studied the lines of Leandras’ face, which still shimmered faintly but definitely didn’t become the face of a monster again. “I told you I don’t drink.”
He cocked his head, a small frown flickering across his brow before the movement seemed to trickle down his face into his lips. The fae’s smile grew, then a low chuckle rose from that smile. “Yes, Jessica. You have mentioned it before.”
“Drink.” Railen looked her up and down and huffed out a laugh. “We haven’t drugged you, Jessica.”
“That’s what it smells—feels like.” She shook her head again and tried to get control over her own mouth again. “What is this?”
“Our opportunity to reveal the purpose and the plan we’ve been waiting for you to fulfill.” He waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. “Safely. Beyond the piercing gaze of our enemy. Beyond the walls of his making. Beyond the personal walls each of us has erected around ourselves as well, for that matter.”
Jessica didn’t miss the pointed glance Railen shot Leandras’ way, but the fae didn’t seem to notice. Or if he had, he was remarkably skilled at hiding his own reactions. Even under the influence of a magical cocktail that turned the whole world upside down and inside out.
“So then let’s talk.” Jessica shifted on the massive cushion beneath her, then realized she’d only wanted to and forced herself to make her body catch up to her head. “How long have you guys been here like this?”
Leandras raised his eyebrows. “Listen to you. You’re a natural.”
“I’m sitting on pillows with two glowing magicals and a potion that makes LSD look like over-the-counter pain meds.”
Railen snorted. “I have no idea what that means. But I have to agree with the Laen’aroth. I didn’t expect you to have discovered the truth of our...circumstances here so quickly.”
So she’d been right. Whatever gods and goddesses of magic or sentient banks or addle-brained vestrohím Guardians existed, Jessica lumped them all together and thanked them profusely for that one little silver lining. Otherwise, she would have hauled her own ass off to Ahárra for entirely the wrong reasons.
“I figured that out before we downed your fancy drink and ran off to Candy Land together.” Jessica tried to sound firm and as pissed-off as she thought she’d be, but a laugh bubbled up her throat, and she couldn’t contain it. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Don’t let the seeming oddity of whatever you may say or hear disturb you, Jessica.” Railen grinned. “Let it come as it will. Everything that needs to be said in Ahárra will be said, one way or another.”
“Fine.” She swallowed, feeling like her mouth was parched and at the same time watering to the point of almost drooling. Just in case, she wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of a hand and didn’t bother checking for the evidence. “It’s something I need to know, isn’t it? Why the order’s been stuck in an endless loop of...all this for as long as you have.”
“Yes, I imagine that has some relevance.” The mage’s eyelids fluttered, and he swayed slightly on his cushion before coming back to himself. “It wasn’t always this way. Leandras can attest to that, I’m sure, but he’s missed so much since our original agreement.”
“Which was?”
“To bring the Guardian to us.” He spread his arms. “When we saw what was coming, that this world would fall to ruin the way you’ve no doubt witnessed it yourself since you arrived, we agreed to stay in Xahar’áhsh while the rest of our order passed through the Gateway.”
“To party,” Jessica said flatly, dipping her chin to fix him with a dubious look.
Leandras also dipped his head, but he did it to hide a smirk until his attention was instantly captured by what was apparently the much more interesting shape of his own hand as he turned it back and forth in front of his face.
“Not intentionally,” Railen replied, frowning at Leandras’ odd reaction before clearly deciding to ignore it. “We remained here because we were needed. Someone was needed in this world to fight back as much as possible. And to help others where we could.”
“You lost Cálindor,” Leandras muttered.
The mage’s genial expression disappeared, and he stared at the table with a scowl.
Jessica couldn’t quite wrap her head around the pulsing filaments of blue light so dark they were hardly blue now wavering off Railen’s body like ghostly flames. When he spoke, the blue whisps flared and shrank in cadence with his words.
“We lost many things. And yes, the Herald’s stronghold was one of them, I’m sorry to say.”
Jessica looked quickly back and forth between the men and got the distinct impression that each of them was really somewhere very far away. Like they were only halfway listening to the conversation. But they’d better pay attention, because she had the feeling they were about to drop some major knowledge around this table.
Finally.
“You’re saying that place belonged to the Laenmúr?”
“Not exactly,” Railen replied.
Not exactly.
It was the same thing Leandras had said when she’d asked him the first time as they’d scaled the cliffs of the wasteland what felt like ages ago—that Cálindor wasn’t exactly held by his enemies but that he wasn’t exactly disappointed to see it razed to the ground.
And maybe the Order of Laenmúr weren’t exactly the Laen’aroth’s greatest allies in this world either.
“But you were trying to protect the Gateway,” she added. “Even if this Cálindor place fell, or you lost it or whatever, you did that much. The door’s still there.”
Floating six feet in the air without enclosed walls, let alone hinges or a frame, but still there.
“We only managed to delay the inevitable.” The mage placed a hand to his chest, then ran it slowly down over the front of his plain brown robe. “Which may no longer be as inevitable
as we’d assumed.”
Jessica took a deep breath and could feel every muscle of her chest expand, every molecule of Xaharí air filling her lungs in this tent that should have been a hell of a lot stuffier than it actually was. “Because of me.”
“You do catch on quickly, don’t you?” Leandras slowly placed his hands on the low table, briefly raised his eyebrows, then set both hands in his lap and looked up at her.
“When someone’s willing to have a real conversation with me and be honest, then yeah.”
The fae did not look happy to be here. For a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of green behind his eyes, which didn’t make any sense. So she had to ignore the strange coloration and write it off as another trick of this whole Ahárra thing. A minute ago, she’d been convinced the damn curio cabinet was staring at her, for crying out loud.
“There are certain paths marked for the Guardian, yes.” Railen nodded slowly. “Which one is for you specifically still remains to be seen.”
“Okay, this is the part where you keep being honest and dive a little deeper with that one.”
“Leandras, this would have been so much easier if you’d alerted her to the—”
“I did what I could, Railen,” the fae snapped. “And more. You have Ahárra now, so I suggest you use it to prepare for the future instead of berating me for the past.”
“Ha!” The blue whisps flaring around the mage’s form disappeared as he slapped his thigh in highly exaggerated amusement. “If I wanted to berate the Laen’aroth for his past mistakes, we’d be starting far before the Age of Aspirok, wouldn’t we?”
“What’s done is done.”
“Yes it is,” Railen hissed, leaning toward the fae for emphasis. “The past isn’t nearly as malleable as you’d like the rest of us to believe, and I’m sure that aggravates you to no end.”
“Guys?” Jessica frowned at the red light now starting to glow in the middle of Railen’s forehead.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 4
