CHAPTER NINE
“Ahearn!” a voice cried from behind.
The swordsman turned, saw two figures emerging from the alley down which the Tualaran had glanced—and started as he recognized the one in the lead. “Varcaxtan? What the devils are you doing here?” Even as he smiled to see Druadaen’s adoptive uncle approaching, he wondered at the Dunarran’s almost gaunt female companion. Watching her nonresponsive state as the older man towed her gently behind him, Ahearn whispered, “Your friend: is she well?”
“Sadly, no,” the woman answered firmly, but with no change to her expression.
Along with the others, Ahearn was startled by the juxtaposition between her ready answer and almost lifeless affect—until he remembered the last time he had seen such a peculiar contrast: “Dragon? You’ve come along, too?”
“Well, I would have thought that self-evident. Does it look like this poor woman would even be conscious, otherwise?” The voice was a reedy wheeze, but the snappish hauteur was unmistakably that of the great wyrm they’d come to know in the foothills of Kar Krathau.
“Well,” Ahearn exclaimed, hands on hips, “for all your airs and crankiness, I am happy to see you! We are very well met, indeed!”
“The pleasure is all yours, I’m sure,” the dragon sniffed. “Although despite your oafish greeting, I find it tolerable to be in your presence once again.” The sunken-eyed woman surveyed them all. “Some more than others,” he added with a hint of warmth as his gaze swept over S’ythreni and Umkhira.
“Oh, you are a beastly old wyrm,” Varcaxtan scolded. “For the better part of this moonphase, he’s been wondering why Tharêdæath’s ship couldn’t go any faster.”
“I am used to wings, you know. It is incomprehensible, how your various species can endure creeping along by foot or by ship. Oh, wait, no, I can comprehend it after all: the dull pace of that travel is nicely matched to the pace at which you cogitate.” He turned toward Ahearn. “That word means ‘think,’ by the way.”
Ahearn crossed his arms, frowning and smiling at the same time. “Yes, my cogitation keeps pace with your barbs quite nicely, ‘old wyrm.’”
“You are not allowed such liberties!”
Ahearn smiled. “Seems I am, actually.”
The woman’s blank eyes fixed on his. “If I were back in my body—”
“Ah, but yer not.” Turning to Varcaxtan before the dragon could react, Ahearn asked, “How’d you lot manage to catch up to us? Gods, Druadaen was near certain that the jackals who nearly snared him might have put you in the same lazarette as his magic auntie!”
“And I very well might have been.” Varcaxtan’s genial smile took on an edge of shrewdness. “But as it so happens, I have a great many friends throughout Dunarra. Especially in the river port of Aedmurun.”
S’ythreni smiled. “And I’m sure some of those friends have ocean-faring boats.”
“Why, so they do! And one in particular was just about to set out downriver to do a bit of fishing on the Sea of Kedlak.”
Elweyr nodded. “Probably ‘needed’ to make port over the border in Menara, to repair some damage to the hull.”
Varcaxtan’s smile broadened. “In fact, she did, though it’s the Helpers’ own guess how such sturdy strakes came to be roughed up in such calm, nighttime seas.”
Ahearn smiled and leaned his arm knowingly against the Dunarran’s. “And I suppose Tharêdæath’s ship just happened to make port there at the same time.”
“Now, how did you guess? As it turns out, I would have been obligated to appear at a hearing akin to the one where Druadaen was ambushed—oh, I misspoke: where he was ‘interviewed.’ But I never did receive such a summons.”
“A shame that you were traveling faster than the couriers who didn’t know where to find you.” S’ythreni’s words were sly, but her eyes were gentle and even warm upon the older Dunarran.
“I suppose it was, Alva S’ythreni,” he agreed with a respectful nod and a small wink.
Throughout the recounting of Varcaxtan’s departure from Dunarra, the dragon had been staring up into the mostly cloudless skies. Ahearn leaned toward its terribly pale female avatar. “Cogitating, are you?”
The head shook, sweat-oiled locks swaying like ragged vines. “No.” The eyes opened. “We have come too late. He is gone.”
“He?” echoed Varcaxtan. “You mean, Druadaen?”
“How do you know?” Elweyr asked carefully.
“I marked him. Just after I decided not to eat you all for invading my home.”
Ahearn crossed his arms. “I thought you don’t eat our breed.”
A sideways glance. “I may reconsider that. Noxious though you are.”
Elweyr poked Ahearn in the ribs before he could reply, then leaned toward the dragon. “Did you only mark Druadaen?”
A shrewd look. “Hmm. Your understanding of the world has grown, thaumancer.”
“I hope so. But you didn’t answer the question.”
“Apparently your understanding hasn’t grown enough to refrain from annoying a dragon. But yes, I marked all of you.” It glanced at Ahearn. “Odd. I had expected you to take semi-eloquent umbrage at my not having asked your permission.”
Ahearn sighed. “Rather like scolding a torturer after you’ve been racked, don’t you think?”
Before the dragon could respond, Umkhira crossed her arms. “So, this marking: is it like S’ythreni’s skeining?”
The dragon shrugged. “Different method, but the same result.” He glanced sideways at his now crestfallen companion. “What is it, Varcaxtan?”
“What do you think? I’m too late to petition the Lady alongside Druadaen.”
The dragon’s voice was milder than his words. “Which I told you was unlikely to occur, but when have you ever listened?”
Elweyr’s gaze flickered between them, came to rest on Varcaxtan. “What do you mean by ‘petitioning her’ alongside Druadaen?”
“Well, it’s as I said the eve of what should have been our departure from Tlulanxu: my Indryllis never left the Nidus. And if anyone can find out what became of her, it would be the Lady of the Mirror.”
Ahearn nodded hesitantly. “Well, that seems sensible enough, but doesn’t Dunarra have persons with the required, er, gifts?”
“It does, but they’re few in number and their skills are reserved for matters involving the Consentium’s collective safety. But even if the fate of my Indryllis was deemed a matter of national interest, the request was sure to be denied once the temples decided that I, too, should be ‘interviewed.’”
“Happily,” the dragon offered in a tone of conclusion, “we needn’t rely on their help or good graces.”
Elweyr frowned. “How so?”
“Unless I miss my guess—and I never do—whatever aid the Lady provides will offer a pathway to make progress on both searches: the one for Druadaen and the one for Indryllis.” The ring of diverse faces was unified in total perplexity. The dragon raised his chin and one didactic finger. “Consider how Druadaen’s disappearance is bound up with Varcaxtan’s quandary, so that in addressing one, we address the other.”
Varcaxtan stared at the shriveled woman that was the dragon. “What do you mean?”
It shrugged. “Where did you last see your wife?”
“In the Nidus,” he said thickly. “Leaving her behind. I should never have—”
“You were obeying orders,” the dragon interrupted. “But to return: why was she ordered to remain behind?”
As Varcaxtan gasped in surprise, Elweyr blurted out, “Osmotia… er, ‘portals.’” His eyes measured the dragon. “So, they’re not just rumors, are they?”
“No.”
“Portals!” Varcaxtan almost wept. “So… so if the Lady’s ‘Mirror’ is what took off my dear lad and how we have to find him, then we can combine that with a search for Indryllis!”
The dragon had leaned slightly away from the Dunarran’s sudden rush of enthusiasm. “Hoping to achieve both those ends through a single course of action is, well… improbably optimistic. Let us rather say this, old friend: that our concerns are clustered about the entries and exits of what was once called the Vortex of Worlds.”
Elweyr grew very pale at the dragon’s last three words.
Ahearn saw the reaction from the corner of his eye, followed up with “A vortex, eh? From what my lost love told me of the sea, a vortex is usually a one-way trip to a deep and briny death.”
The dragon considered the swordsman. “Though revoltingly quaint, I cannot dismiss the wisdom of that warning nor deny that it may be an apt metaphor for the path before us. Such a journey precludes foreseeing either waypoints or outcomes. We may only be sure that to undertake it is far more perilous than to choose not to. So none among you should be ashamed or hesitant to step back from it, if this is the course we decide upon.”
Ahearn didn’t have to think about his response, but even so, he was not the first to step forward. He’d expected Umkhira might match him, but—against all logic and reason—S’ythreni beat them both.
She stared down the surprised glances. “A young idealistic Dunarran on his own, diving headfirst into an abyss of uncertainty?” She snorted. “Not to go is like unto letting him die by the side of the road.” Their stares became dubious smiles. She looked down and finally murmured, “Besides, he never let us down. Not once. Tried to push us off when he thought the danger was too great. Not sure I could live with myself if I turned away now.”
The arms that caught her up in a sudden hug—and were probably the only ones she hadn’t the temerity or heart to bat away—were Varcaxtan’s. “Light love you, Alva S’ythreni, as a wish from me as well as for him. By the moons, that lad has made fine friends!”
She slipped out of the Dunarran’s embrace, but held both his hands in hers. “I do this as much for me as for either of you.”
He nodded. “Be that as it may, I’m grateful. These past ten or so years—losing the lad’s parents, then Indryllis, and now perhaps him as well—well, you’d think living a long life prepares you for loss. But not for so much, and not all in the space of a decade.”
Umkhira put a hand on the man’s muscular shoulder. “I think there must be much pain in living so many years as Dunarrans do.”
Varcaxtan’s eyes were sad, even as he regarded the Lightstrider warmly. “Aye, but do you know one of the best things about living so long? You spend more time with the one you love. Not all Dunarran couples are so lucky, but Indryllis and I have been together for many, many decades.” He stopped, his mouth smiling but his eyes set in a brittle squint. “Now, shall I tell you one of the worst things about living so long?”
S’ythreni shook her head and clasped his hands tightly; her eyes were wet. “That when you have spent so much time with the one you love, you wish you could die with them. That this life is too empty to endure when they are gone.” She looked up, her eyes fierce and filled with defiance at life itself. “If there is any chance your Indryllis is alive, then I am going on with you. No matter how long or how far.”
“Bole-blessed friend, this path could be the death of me… and any who follow to its end.”
“I don’t care.” She raised her chin in response to the puzzled look on his face. “No, don’t ask: I have my reasons. It is settled.”
Umkhira looked gruffly pleased. “So, where do we start?”
“Now there’s a practical lass after my own heart,” Ahearn agreed loudly. “Maybe this will help us.” He slipped the sai’niin ring on his finger. It jammed halfway down—too small—but before he could twist it past his knuckle, it loosened of its own accord and eased past the joint. Well, now that’s odd, Ahearn thought—right before he felt a sensation in the back of his head, as if a vague memory of something he’d lost had manifested physically and was now prodding him to go in search of it.
“Damn, but if it doesn’t seem to be guiding me now!” he blurted out. He glanced at the dragon and then S’ythreni. “The two of you seem to have the best instincts for mystic bits of eld. Is it possible that Druadaen is still somewhere on Arrdanc, and that it’s trying to physically push me toward him?”
“No,” S’ythreni said sharply. “He’s beyond the Great Weave.”
The dragon nodded agreement.
“Then why in the worlds is it trying to turn me back around toward the bay? Is it trying to get us to return to the Atremoënse?”
“Or maybe,” the dragon added in a droll tone, “it is because Tharêdæath’s ship is there waiting for us.”
“Which is preferable in what way?” Umkhira asked frankly.
“I am not implying that the ship is preferable—although it is. Rather, I suspect the ring is signaling that its destination is more amenable to our purposes.”
Elweyr nodded. “However else they may differ, all accounts of osmotia—and other kinds of portals—agree on one point: that they are very old objects. So perhaps it’s urging us to seek out the persons with oldest memories.”
“Iavarain,” Umkhira breathed with a measure of trepidation.
“Specifically, Uulamantre, who are best reached by sailing to Tharêdæath’s home port in Mirroskye.”
“Eslêntecrë,” murmured S’ythreni. To Ahearn’s ear, her tone was not one of fondness, but reluctance and regret.
Umkhira’s response was far more blunt. “So we travel toward Mirroskye? We hope to be welcomed in the place that has made a reputation for welcoming no one?”
The dragon smiled with one side of its gray-lipped mouth. “I suspect our experience shall be different.”
“Well, let’s hope so,” Ahearn exclaimed loudly. “Now, before we take even one step on the path to becomin’ mates, Uncle Varcaxtan, I must begin by telling you how happy I am to have you with us.” He frowned, reflecting. “Well, for the most part.”
“Oh? And what part gives you pause?”
“Well, you take this conversation, for instance. Here we are, setting out on an adventure as strange as it is sure to be wondrous. But rather than a happy embrace of the road ahead and of the novelties we might encounter—or slip into our packs—it’s all gloom and doom. In two shakes, you and the old wyrm here have us on the verge of sitting chin on fist, contemplating the great seriousness of the many ‘implications’ of our choices.”
He reared back. “Now that won’t do at all. A Dunarran and a dragon are more than twice as much seriousness as I can handle. And see how you’ve infected poor High Ears with a similar tendency? Even the green lass is already so somber that she only smiles to sharpen her teeth. And Elweyr—forgive the truth, my old friend—has never been renowned for his ready congeniality and lively banter. So there’s naught but me to keep you all from cryin’ in your beers. And that prospect makes even me sad. So there’ll be no joy among us. None at all,” he finished in a morose voice. “Not even from the beers.”
Varcaxtan glanced sideways at Elweyr. “He’s quite the performer. Tell me: how long can he keep it up?”
“How long do you have to watch?” Elweyr shot back.
“Cut to the quick I am by such hard-hearted opinions of me!” Ahearn protested. “I’ve half a mind to send you both packing. But I’m willing to cogitate upon the alternatives… if it’s done over a few full tankards for us to cry in.”
The dragon sighed, exchanged glances with Varcaxtan. “And I presume those tankards are to be filled from what remains in our pockets?”
Ahearn beamed. “See? You’re not so bad at cogitatin’ yerself. Now let’s find a generous hand on an open tap before I die of thirst.”