by Terah Edun
“I don’t understand—” Mae started to interrupt.
“And you won’t until you let me explain,” Rivan said while cutting her off quickly. “It’s important for you to realize the mechanics if you want to know the implications.”
“Fine,” Mae grumpily said. She had to wonder if he was stalling for some reason, but she didn’t know up from down in regards to magic so it was hard to tell either way.
“The portals act as gates but when you stop it between physical places you end up somewhere that is of neither composition,” Rivan said easily.
Mae waited silently for him to get to the point.
“That is what I did when I first took you from the sickroom,” Rivan said while he looked aside with a shifty gaze.
Mae’s interest peaked at his words then. This was something she hadn’t heard before.
“You gated us from the sickroom?” she asked astonished.
She knew he’d gotten her out and away from the watchful eyes of the mercenaries somehow but she’d never expected that he’d expended such magical energy to do so.
“Why?” Mae asked warily. “You weren’t in danger yourself and as far as you knew I’d never help you with your plan against Ava.”
“It was a risk,” Rivan said with a shrug. “But with risks comes rewards. When I gated you to the patio in fact, there was a specific reason.”
“Because you wanted to get to a physical place that they wouldn’t find us in,” Mae said. “I get that.”
“No, you don’t,” Rivan hurriedly said as he leaned forward with an eager and rap gaze. “Because I didn’t take you to a physical place.”
The emphasis he put on the last two words were unmistakable.
She remembered being there on the patio. Seeing the emptiness. Smelling the fresh air. But he was saying she hadn’t been.
Or was he? She wondered.
“You took us somewhere,” Mae said slowly. “But it wasn’t normal, was it?”
He gave her a satisfied smile. “Now you’re getting it.”
She didn’t like the look on his face. It was as keen as Donna Marie’s though a little less malicious, she had to say.
“Where?” Mae asked in one short word.
“The Aether realm!” Rivan explained in a short, excited burst as if he’d been waiting his whole life to admit that to her.
“The Aether realm?” Mae asked while licking her suddenly dry lips. “Where is that?”
“More like what is that?” Rivan swiftly corrected. “And the answer is that it’s a plane of existence that exists beyond our own. It is not a physical plane in the mortal sense but it has all the same traits, same geographic designs down to the trees and the buildings. It’s a mirror of our own mortal plane.”
“Just no people,” Mae guessed as her heart sunk.
“Precisely,” Rivan said with smug satisfaction. “Making it the perfect place to hide out from enemies who can’t know where you are.”
Mae was still for a moment as she took a wild guess. But it felt right.
“Those fissures?” Mae asked. “They didn’t just appear out of nowhere for no reason then?”
Rivan actually looked impressed at her leap of logic and he answered her accordingly.
“No,” Rivan said with frankness. “That was Ava and Donna Marie searching the realms for us.”
“And they found us in a supposedly unfindable realm,” Mae accused.
“It took them hours to do so though,” Rivan stressed. “Hours that we got back to plan and to connect.”
Mae leaned back on her heels as she expressed a tired sigh.
“And what has that gotten us?” she said dispiritedly. “We’re alone in a chapel with pigeons roosting above us for company and still no closer to getting to my family or out of here.”
“Oh my sweet summer child,” Rivan said with a look of absolute glee. “You have no idea just how magnificent the last few hours have been. We’ve done more than I could have ever dreamed and we’re only just beginning.”
Mae just looked at him with wide eyes but internally she was wondering why it was that anytime the foreign mages got excited, she ended up heartbroken and in physical pain by the end of their escapades.
Right now she was just tired.
She wanted comforting, her family safe, and her life back…in that order.
Unfortunately for Maeryn Darnes, her life had never been the same since she’d torn an interesting script of casting from a grimoire she should have left in her grandmother’s private sanctum.
“I should have left well enough alone,” Mae whispered as Rivan started up once more and another pigeon squatted on her.
This time the telltale splat of white-and-grey poop landed directly in her hair.
A fitting end to a fitting day if experience had taught her anything.
16
Mae reached up with the only thing she had, her sleeve, to wipe the disgusting excrement from her hair.
Unfortunately, the result was that it smeared the offending material further into her hair. Mae felt such revulsion and disgust, she almost started to cry.
This was the last thing I needed today, bird poop in my hair! Mae thought with misery.
Rivan, seeing the issue, reached forward hesitantly and placed a hand over her head in the general vicinity of the offending poop. She felt him call up some magic and although she couldn’t see it working, when he pulled back and she explored the patch of her hair with her own hand, her fingers came back dry and clear of detritus.
“How did you do that?” Mae asked in wonder.
“Magic can do a lot of things, although, we don’t usually do it for something as mundane as performing a cleaning ritual,” Rivan said dismissively.
“No, you just portal between realms with it,” Mae said in a joking manner as she relaxed just a bit. The pigeon poop wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Having it gone made her day just a little bit measurably better and at this point…that was all she could ask.
“That’s the most exciting part,” Rivan said as he leaned towards her eagerly. “I’ve never been able to do that before! Holding myself in that realm is just…something my people don’t do very well.”
His gaze drifted off as he seemed to look inward while he continued to speak.
“In fact, I might be the first of my kind to do an extended stay there,” Rivan said in a dreamy voice. “Imagine the Queens when I go before them, an outcast, sharing my experience. They’ll be clamoring for my attention. For me to show them how it is done.”
Mae watched Rivan with something akin to wariness. She had no idea what he was talking about: he was an outcast and Queens?
How many brides did the King of his nation have? She wondered incredulously.
But that wasn’t as important as to how it had been accomplished.
“If you’ve never been able to do that before,” Mae asked hesitantly. “What changed? Did the portal malfunction? Did you mean to go there in the first place?”
“Oh yes,” Rivan said with a quick smile. “It worked out better than I ever dreamed but that’s because I had you.”
“So you’re saying I helped you transport us into the Aether realm?” Mae asked astonished. “Even unconscious?”
Rivan exploded into a grin as he nodded. “Now you see why I’m willing to risk taking your side against Ava and Donna Marie.”
Mae snorted. “From what you told me, it’s as much about your own self-interest, as it is the power you think you’ll gain from forming a partnership.”
Rivan shrugged, unbothered.
“Sahalians never do anything without a guaranteed victory in the end!” he said proudly. “You just happen to be quite a large bounty for mine.”
Mae stirred at his words but she was more concerned about what he had and hadn’t told her.
“So this Aether realm?” she prodded on. “We were in it?”
“We were,” Rivan confirmed.
“And we’re not now?” she gu
essed.
“We’re not.”
“But it looks just like the physical plane that we originally came from?” she asked
“It does,” he said.
“Then how do I know you aren’t lying and saying we aren’t there when we are?” she questioned.
“You’re a mage,” he said with derision. “You should be able to sense if you’re currently within your own realm. Don’t rely on me, reach out.”
Mae could see he was going to be stubborn about this so she reluctantly did as he bade. She closed her physical eyes and sank down inside of herself, reaching for her magic and exploring the feeling of the live channels inside of her for the first time in a long, long while.
“Reach inside for your core,” Rivan instructed gently. “Focus on the streams of power emanating out from it. The main stream should always be connected directly to you.”
“I see it,” Mae said as she concentrated.
Her power was a strong pillar rising up from a more molten spherical core in her chest. She only had to hover around and suddenly her entire body felt alive with magic.
“Now back away from it,” Rivan counselled. “And look around.”
“For what?” Mae murmured to him out loud as she tried to do just that. It was a lot harder than it looked to let go of the power once she had herself wrapped in it, but she focused on tamping it down in the same manner she’d done the fire she’d called upon earlier that day and it worked. It shrank back with alacrity and she was able to look around herself and see smaller thinner lines of power reaching out from her core.
There were only two or three and they were weaving in and out as they reached out for something that wasn’t quite there.
“Those lines are your connection to other mages and other realms,” Rivan continued to instruct. “One each should be reaching for myself and one for Donna Marie. We’re the mages with whom your magic is most familiar, so that connection has been already set.”
“Should my magic be this…friendly with other people?” Mae asked, uncomfortable at the urgency she felt from the line with its need to connect now that she was paying attention.
“No,” Rivan said. “But you’ll learn to shield yourself and your core soon enough so that no other mages can take advantage of your gifts without your express permission.”
That sounded good to Mae. As a result the raised hairs on the back of her neck relaxed a little.
She wandered over to the only remaining line of power out of her core that wasn’t tied to either herself or someone else.
It didn’t even have to thrum for her to realize this was exactly what Rivan meant.
It felt different, the magic flowing through this line. It had a mix about it that felt off for this physical plane and she knew she’d found her connection to the Aether realm.
“So I could grab this and transport us between the physical plane and the Aether realm?” Mae asked as she stared at it in wonder.
“It’s not precisely that easy,” Rivan said in a cagey voice. “You have a natural inclination to jump between realms and the power to do so, but it still takes an experienced mage casting to make it happen.”
“Which is where you come in,” Mae said in a slightly accusatory voice.
“Precisely,” Rivan said pleased, not seeing her discontent as a deterrent in the slightest. He probably thought it was a compliment.
Mae blinked and asked, “Now what?”
Rivan said in a smooth tone, “Now just follow the line out. Don’t pull on it or use it in anyway. Just see where it wants to take you.”
Mae drifted closer to the second, smallest of her lines of power and as she did she saw that that the end of its length was pointing outward, and away instead of curling back on itself like the one attached to Rivan.
She matched its direction and saw it was pointing due northeast.
“If I follow it all the way to the end will that lead me to the Aether realm?” Mae guessed.
“Only if you strum the power and tell it to take you there,” Rivan said in a cautious voice. “But I’d advise you not to even test it before you’re officially enrolled in a school for mages. Improperly trained full adepts have ended up in strange areas of the world and falling to their deaths by opening a portal to the Aether realm that they were ill prepared to handle.”
Mae hummed under her breath. As he’d advised, she didn’t do anything more than hover around her new link. She wasn’t that interested in jumping anyway, it hadn’t been her most pleasant experience before and she wasn’t eager to go back to a plane of existence where fissures opened up every which way and tried to eat you like ravenous mudholes.
Rising away from the line now that she knew it was there, Mae took a breath and opened her eyes to find Rivan watching her keenly.
“What did you discover?” he immediately asked.
“The difference between our physical realm and the Aether realm is profound,” she admitted as cleared her throat. “Now that I know what to look for that is.”
He nodded.
“Good, I’m glad you can see that now,” Rivan said proudly. “Stick with me and you’ll learn so much more.”
Rolling her shoulders back, Mae decided now was as good a time as ever to get up and move on.
Standing, she stretched her arms above her head and looked down at Rivan with a questioning look.
“Thank you for the thorough explanation,” Mae said shyly. “But shouldn’t we be moving on now?”
Rivan nodded as he replied, “You’re welcome.”
He too, stood as he yawned and said easily, “Actually I think we should get some rest. We’ve done a lot of magic today and a lot of running.”
“But the pursuit,” Mae pointed out in a worried voice.
Rivan shrugged.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “We’ve jumped between enough realms that they’ll have a harder time finding us in this one.”
Mae frowned. “What does that mean? I thought you said this was our regular plane of existence.”
Turning around in a circle she looked confused.
“It is!” Rivan assured her. “But all those jumps we did, into the patio and out of the storage room muddied our trail enough that, for Donna Marie and Ava to find us, they’ll have to do more than send those fissures to flush us out. They’ll have to get their hands dirty themselves.”
His eyes gleamed at the very thought, though Mae wasn’t so sure she’d like it when two formidable mages were forced to do something they weren’t at all interested in.
“Sounds like a fight brewing,” Mae muttered.
“Only if they can find us,” Rivan assured her. “And I left a heck of a confusing trail. All of those fissures surrounding us as we leapt and escaped all did part of the work for us. It broke off the pattern they could have used to trace our magic. So they’re left starting from the beginning and I assure you, if we’re tired, they’ll be exhausted and magicless for a least a day or two.”
That sounded good to Mae. There was just one more concern she had to be sure about before she relaxed even the tiniest.
“But they know we’re in this reality?” Mae asked skeptically. “The real one?”
“If they don’t, they will when they manage to restore their gifts in a few days,” Rivan muttered under his breath, half to himself, half to her.
“Alright how do we get ahead of them?” Mae asked impatiently. “I’m tired of being chased.”
Rivan raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on her ire.
Instead he said, “By not being so tired that we miss easy things and fall flat on our faces at the first sign of trouble again.”
If he was ashamed at castigating her he didn’t show it. In fact Mae deflated a bit as she said with a wry look, “I am a bit tired aren’t I?”
“We both are,” Rivan said as he looked around with a frown.
“So why don’t we see about getting a few hours of rest,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Then we
’ll get around to seeing about your family and escaping those two mages.”
“Plus all the mercenaries,” Mae said deadpan.
“Yeah, them too,” Rivan said jokingly.
Mutual amusement caused them both to crack a smile for the first time.
They weren’t quite friends.
But they were more than acquaintances.
Mae just hoped that if she took a rest break this time, which heavens knew she needed, that she’d wake up in the same place and physical plane of existence.
She wouldn’t have put it past Rivan to transport her without her knowledge in her sleep again and honestly she didn’t have enough training to stop him if he tried.
As they walked towards the back of the chapel where Mae knew the rooms for the priest were held, she brought up her concerns.
If she couldn’t speak up now after all, there was no way she could trust him when the going got tough again.
“No magic while I’m out,” Mae said with a heavy yawn as they entered the room with two bed nooks on opposite sides of the wall awaiting them. There was even a blanket atop a lumpy mattress in each nook already ready.
“I will do my best to resist the temptation,” Rivan said with a dramatic clasp of his hand that had her giggling half in amusement and half in weariness.
His promise would have to do because unless she decided to immolate him here and now…that was all she had.
As she laid down without a further word and closed her eyes, Mae drifted off into darkness dreaming of fire and retribution.
And this time, as she sank into her dreams, she did so with a smile on her face.
She hadn’t won yet, but she was holding her own, which was more than she could say previously.
17
When she woke up, she didn’t know how much time had passed.
The room was dark but it had been dark before she entered with her light so there was nothing upon which to base an estimate.
Silently Mae raised her hand and let her fire trail up her arm until her fingers glowed.
When she looked over to the opposite side of the room she saw Rivan still asleep and to her surprise, he looked peaceful, approachable even, which was something she would have never classified him as while he was awake.
