Forgiveness
Part One
Dewshine blamed her nightmares on Tamsin. Once the dreams that disturbed the Wolfriders’ chief huntress had been the simple kind: remembered traumas, familiar threats, simple variations on waking life. But since Tamsin had decided to walk with spirits and aspire to the life of a Glider lord, Dewshine’s nightmares had taken her to strange and frightening places scarcely conceived of before – places deep in her soul she had tried to deny for the better part of ten thousand years.
Once again she found herself inside Blue Mountain, a prisoner of the Gliders. It was not Blue Mountain That Was, but the Blue Mountain That Might Have Been: a sickening patchwork of other possible realities within the Multitude. Floors disappeared and reappeared underneath her feet, so that she was forever stumbling and falling. Walls changed shape and pattern, closing off doorways as she approached, trapping her in a constantly shifting maze.
She saw Tyldak crouched in a corner, shivering and moaning in pain. One moment he was a wingless youth, the next his body distorted in a haze of magic as wings sprouted – first from the familiar anchors of his shoulder-blades, then from the arms themselves, then from his legs, until he was a hideous parody of a mangled butterfly. His beautiful bronze-brown hair turned bone-white, then fell out in patches, then the skull itself transformed, growing a long fin at the crown of his head. His face became gaunt, his eyes grew huge and unblinking.
“Tyldak?” Dewshine cried, too afraid to approach him.
“I… cannot protect you…” he hissed. “I never could…”
“Tyldak!”
“I am a poor guard for those I love. Whatever the world… I will always fail you–”
He threw his head back in pain as something thrust its way out of his chest with a sickening crunch of bone. Claws – raptor claws. As Dewshine watched in horror his body twisted inside out, reforming itself into a grotesque featherless parody of an eagle, with four wings and a helmet of bone for a head.
The beast cawed at her, spreading its naked wings in a threat display. Dewshine turned and ran.
A wall appeared out of nowhere, sealing her a small room. She saw a little baby lying on a bed, screaming in hunger. Something about its curly hair and balled little fists stirred a primordial memory. Windkin, she thought. But before she could reach for him, Winnowill was there, lifting up Dewshine’s son, baring her breast and letting the infant latch on.
“Put him down!” Dewshine screamed.
“The poor thing was starving,” Winnowill said, voice dripping with false compassion. “You obviously cannot care for her.”
“Her?” Dewshine looked again, and the head at Winnowill’s breast was golden.
“Is it any wonder she cried out for me?” Winnowill taunted.
“Give me my child!” Dewshine fumbled for her dagger, but found her scabbard bare.
“She belongs to me, as you do.”
“I am a Wolfrider! I don’t belong to you!”
“Do you not… Lree?”
Dewshine screamed as the pain drove her to her knees.
“Whatever the world… I will always have your soul,” Winnowill vowed.
Lree, Lree, Lree. Her soulname became a dagger used against her, plunging deep into her heart again and again.
**Lree! Wake up. It’s just a dream.**
Dewshine jerked awake. Her head spun as she tried to reconcile herself to her new reality: prone on a mattress, draped in a warm sheet of skin and reed-thin bone. “Tyldak?” she slurred, still half-caught in the dream.
“Here.”
It was a moonless night. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of their den, she groped her way to her lifemate’s face, and let out a sigh of relief as her fingers found his beloved features and long waves of soft hair unchanged. Tyldak let out a soft grunt of pain as she leaned on the edge of his wing, and he quickly repositioned them so that they sat up in bed, Dewshine perched in his lap and cradled against his chest.
“The same nightmare?” he asked.
She nodded. The details varied sometimes, but the theme was always the same.
“You should see Rain.”
“We both know there’s nothing he can do for me – except magic me to sleep or keep me addled on those bitter teas.”
“That’s better than this torment, surely.”
“I don’t ask others to fight my battles for me,” Dewshine insisted. “I’ll beat this myself, like I did before.”
“It was never this bad before.”
Dewshine hoped it was too dark for him to make out her wry expression. Tyldak liked to remember their early years together as idyllic. She had long since given up trying to remind him of the truth. She found his innocence endearing most of the time. This was not such a time.
“Do you want to share what you saw?” Tyldak asked her gently, after they’d sat in silence for uncounted moments.
“No. Not now.”
“Do you want to go back to sleep?”
Dewshine listened to the birdsong, in its earliest morning verses. “It will be light soon,” she said. “I’ll stay up now, and hope for a sounder daysleep.”
She began to gently extricate herself from Tyldak’s embrace. “You go back to sleep if you like,” she insisted. “Really, I don’t mind.”
**Mother, Father!** A loud, discordant sending echoed in both their heads at once. **Are you awake? Come quickly! You have to see this!**
Panic gripped her. **Tamsin? What’s wrong? You sound… different.** For a heartbeat, Dewshine had a sudden terror that she had awoken inside another world of the Multitude, and her daughter had become another soul enetirely.
**Nothing’s wrong! Nothing at all! Come to the Palace and you’ll see! Oh – and bring some of Father’s old leathers. We don’t have anything in the right size here.**
Dewshine and Tyldak exchanged baffled expressions in the dark. Perhaps Tamsin could sense their confusion, or perhaps they simply did not answer quickly enough.
**Come quickly! Oh, I can’t wait for you to meet him!**
* * *
Dewshine was never at ease around High Ones. Their appearance, their scent, the very aura they radiated, had always screamed stranger to her wolf-senses. And though Rain claimed he had washed all the traces of mortality out of her veins millennia ago, Dewshine still felt the restless wolf whimpering inside her whenever she looked up at Timmain. As if her heart could tell that the skin their ancestress wore was a mere disguise, and that the soul underneath was as alien to Dewshine’s as an elf’s to a worm’s.
It must be what humans felt when they prayed to their gods and spirits, Dewshine always thought. Awe mingled with fear. She saw it even in Tamsin’s eyes, as her daughter worked to lace Tyldak’s old tunic over the Navigator’s shoulders.
“How does it feel?” Tamsin asked in a breathless whisper.
“Confining,” he replied, with a scornful curl of the lip.
Tamsin touched Sylas’s hand lightly. Dewshine half-expected the High One to flinch at the contact, like Littlefire always did. But instead Sylas gripped Tamsin’s hand so tightly her knuckles turned white. Dewshine’s gaze flicked up to her daughter’s face. If Tamsin was in pain, she was hiding it well; all Dewshine saw was the same dazed expression of joy and anticipation Tamsin had been wearing since her parents first arrived on the scene.
Swift made a dismissive wave. “You’ll get used to it.” She walked around the Navigator and tutted at the worn laces that chafed against his pale flesh. “You do have wide shoulders for a High One. But other than that Tyldak’s a good match for you, size-wise. I’m sure Newstar can use his measurements to make you something out of cloth. Leather’s probably not the most comfortable after four hundred spirals in Preserver webbing.”
Sylas plucked at the collar of his tunic. “One shell isn’t enough for you–” He started at Swift’s words. “So long?”
“As near as we can reckon,” she added with a shrug. “Might have missed a few eights.”
Sylas nodded. “The longer the time-curve, the closer one comes to eternity.”
That seemed to wound Tamsin in a way physical pain could not. “Sylas?” she asked, fear in her voice. But he turned and gave her a reassuring smile.
“Not yet,” he murmured.
“We’re honored to have you back with us, Navigator,” Sunstream spoke up. “And… uh… will you be staying with us?”
Sylas looked to Tamsin. “That is for my bond to say.”
“Your bond?” Dewshine blurted out. “What do you mean?”
**I should think it’s obvious,** Tyldak locksent archly.
Tamsin blushed under their combined stares. “A guide is no good if he doesn’t have someone to show the way,” she mumbled. “That’s what Navigators do. They bond with travellers.”
Sylas looked as though he might contradict her for a moment, but he said nothing.
“Explains why she was dreaming so much,” Swift remarked with a twinkle in her eye. When Sylas looked at her sharply, she made her smile more benevolent and said, “My son speaks for us all. We’re very glad to have you back among the living, Navigator. The Palace has become a place of learning for all our kind, and I cannot begin to imagine all you have to teach us.”
“No, you cannot,” Sylas agreed.
“Body feels… about right? We kept it safe for you.”
“I cannot remember.”
“Of course. Well, it should all be there. Our healer swore everything was in working order.” Swift’s smile slowly began to take on a cast of self-satisfaction.
Sylas continued to scrutinize her face.. “Your voice… it is familiar to me.” He glanced at Tamsin. “And not just from your dreams.”
“Swift was one of the elves who rescued you from the crash,” Tamsin prompted.
“Rescue…” a veil seemed to fall over Sylas’s eyes. “If one can call it that.”
“Do you remember when the Palace crashed?” Swift probed gently.
Sylas’s brow knit, his eyes narrowed. “Pain. Screams. My own and those of others. Pain, above all. A great tearing away from my kindred. A broken circle, and only the echo of my own cries for company.”
“The humans attacked the Palace with their fire-slings,” Swift offered. “One struck the Navigators’ chamber. Your cocoon was blown out–”
“Yes, I know all that,” Sylas said sharply. “I have had a small eternity to unravel all the threads.”
“Three turns of the seasons, by our counting,” Swift said blandly.
“Forgive me. I am… not used to this manner of communion. Or this manner of space-time perception…”
“Understandable,” Sunstream offered. “If you would like, there have been others you could consult – others who have donned shells after a long time in spirit – though nowhere near as long as you.”
“Yes… V-Tamsin has told me. You have only just rediscovered the art of shell culture.”
“In your case, we were lucky,” Swift said. “It’s not our usual custom to preserve the shells of the dead… but I knew you’d want your body back one day.”
“How? Are you a student of temporal probability?”
Swift blinked, then grinned. “No, just an elf with a healthy appreciation for the flesh. There were those who said you’d never want to come back – that you’d forgotten what you were missing. It seemed to me you had the right to remember.”
Sunstream sidled up alongside his mother. “Smugness doesn’t become a leader of many,” he muttered archly.
“Your father would disagree,” Swift quipped.
“Mm. Just as well he’s off hunting with Venka.”
“You don’t need to meet everyone at once,” Tamsin told Sylas. “Take all the time you need. We won’t let anyone bother you.” She glanced at Sunstream and Swift. “We won’t, right?”
“Of course not,” Sunstream said. “If it’s solitude you’d like, Navigator, then we’ll see you have it.”
Sylas made a barking sound that might have been a laugh. “I have had my fill of solitude. If I am denied my spirit-kin, then I must embrace my living kindred.”
“If you have been sharing memories with Tamsin, then you must know you’re not the only Firstcomer to survive the stranding here,” Sunstream added. “Whenever you’re feeling ready, you might want to start with them.”
“I can’t wait to see Timmain’s face,” Swift exclaimed.
Sylas gave a visible start at the name. “Timmain!” The sound that came from his throat was akin to a growl.
Dewshine felt her ears pop, and the floor seemed to shift under her feet, just enough to make her stumble.
“Whoa!” Swift exclaimed, throwing her arms out for balance. “Did we just move? We just moved! Sunstream?”
Sunstream closed his eyes a moment, then opened them in an expression of surprise. “We’re at the College.”
Dewshine looked at Tamsin, then at Tyldak, in alarm.
“Navigator?” Sunstream pressed.
Sylas looked momentarily abashed. “I… apologize. I am out of practice.”
“It’s not a question of your landing skills,” Sunstream blurted out. “We don’t just move the Palace without warning!”
“I will remember that next time,” Sylas said, already making for the door.
“Next time?” Swift stammered. “We said you were welcome in the Palace, we didn’t say you could take it out for a sail every time you felt like it!”
“He… is a Navigator,” Tamsin said apologetically.
“Ugh…” Swift moaned into her hand. “Sunstream, can you–”
“Already done. Venka will tell everyone not to expect us back right away.”
“Sorry about this, cousin,” Swift said to Dewshine. “Have we taken on any other unsuspecting travellers?”
Sunstream’s eyelids flickered a moment as he checked. “No. Just the residents. And most are still sleeping.”
“I should go with him, Mother,” Tamsin said, before running to catch up with Sylas. Dewshine looked at Swift in concern.
“We’re not going back?”
Swift shrugged. “We’re here now. Might as well stay for the reunion.”
* * *
Dawn was still hours away in the Painted Mountains. The Palace’s arrival had roused Aurek from his slumber and he stumbled out to meet them, tunic untucked, boots half-laced. He seemed to understand after only the briefest glance at Sylas, and he ushered the visitors into the slowly revolving Egg. But Sylas appeared to need no guide. He strode on ahead of Aurek, effortlessly threading his way through the many gateways and corridors. Tamsin struggled to keep up with him.
This was nothing like what she had expected when she’d called for her parents. She’d had visions of a great communal feast held at the Grandfather Tree as she introduced her teacher and lovemate to all her tribe and family. But since the mention of Timmain, Sylas had scarcely deigned to look at her.
She fought the urge to locksend to him, to call him back to her. Whatever sudden need had gripped him, he had to see it through. Yet she felt a burning need in her own belly, a hunger for his acknowledgement. It made her feel oddly lightheaded.
They descended deeper inside the Egg, stepping through stone gates into progressively more ornately decorated shells. Tamsin had visited the College a few times in her life, but she had never gone further than the outermost shell, in the sunlight and fresh air. Here the only light came from troll glowstone, and the spidery veins of starstone that sparkled in the walls. The faintest dusting of light in the Sixth Shell, by the Seventh the starstone had formed a bright octagonal latticework in the seedrock, and Tamsin felt the same thrumming in her veins she had grown used to inside the Palace.
Swift and Sunstream followed behind with Aurek, explaining in whispers. Tamsin caught the odd stray word, but kept her focus on Sylas, always a few paces ahead of her. The open panel of Tyldak’s borrowed tunic bared the ridge of his spine, and the muscles at his shoulderblades, flexing irritably with each step.
The brilliant light of pure starstone beckoned them onward at the gate to the Eighth Sphere, the heart of the Egg. Sylas slipped through without breaking stride, while Tamsin stumbled to a halt as the moving wall closed the gate behind him. She waited in growing anxiety for the rotation of the innermost shell to bring another gate into alignment. She counted to eight before it opened again, and leapt across the threshold. The brightness left her momentarily dazzled. Suddenly there was nowhere left to go.
She stood inside a large room, about the size of the Palace’s antechamber. The walls were pocked with storage alcoves, but the floor was bare of all furnishings, save one simple crystal throne.
Sylas stood a few paces ahead of her. Across the room, Timmain was slowly rising to her feet. Locks of long silver hair tumbled out of her lap to sweep the floor. The white moth-fabric of her gown seemed to glow in the starstone light.
“Brother,” Timmain said. “My heart rejoi–”
She fell silent, her lips still parted in mid-word. Her arms fell slack at her sides and her eyes widened. Tamsin looked at Sylas. He stood with fists clenched, eyes narrowed and jaw set. As her gaze darted between the Firstcomers, she watched Timmain’s face begin to pale until her skin was the same color as her gown. Her bared shoulders began to tremble, and her fingers crooked and uncrooked convulsively.
In contrast, Sylas seemed to be gaining color in his cheeks, as if he were somehow stealing Timmain’s lifeblood. A tic tugged at the corner of his mouth. Beads of sweat were beginning to form at his browline.
“What’s happening?” Swift exclaimed as the rest of the party caught up with them. “Tamsin?”
“I don’t know!”
Sunstream and Aurek both groaned and clutched their brows, clearly affected by the psychic charge in the air. “Drukk, do we need Weatherbird?” Swift asked. “Or Tass?”
Someone was humming. At first Tamsin thought it was Sylas or Timmain. But at length she realized the sound was coming from the walls themselves: complex tones and harmonies, interspersed with hisses and faint clicks.
“I know that sound,” Swift whispered.
“The Ancient Tongue,” Aurek confirmed.
Now Tamsin could feel growing magic in the air, an oppressive weight, like the charge of an impending skyfire strike. The hum had become a whine, rising to an uncomfortable pitch. She covered her ears.
The sound ended abruptly. Timmain and Sylas both let out the breath they had been holding. Timmain was the first to blink, and she slowly folded her hands to her breast as she drew several deep breaths to restore the color to her face.
“I understand,” she whispered.
Sylas only stared hard at her. His fists and jaw remained tightly clenched.
“Your rage, your helplessness, the sense of betrayal. I have experienced it all before. This is a harsh world you have awoken to. Your instinct is to retaliate: to cause pain to escape pain.” She reached out a slender hand. “I forgive you.”
“It is not I who needs forgiveness,” Sylas said sharply.
He turned on his heel. “We may depart,” he told Swift in passing. “I have learned all that I need to.”
Swift looked about in bewilderment. At length she sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I’m starting to wish I’d stayed in bed,” she muttered. “Why did only the crazy ones survive the crash?”
Timmain swallowed. “This is your doing, my child,” she said coolly. “You insisted on binding him to a corporeal existence. And one of your kindred called him back into a world not his own.” Her gaze flickered to Tamsin momentarily, and Tamsin felt herself shrink under the High One’s scrutiny.
“He is right,” Timmain pronounced, “he is not the one who must seek forgiveness.”
Chilled to the bone, Tamsin turned to look for Sylas. But he had already disappeared through the winking gate. Impatiently she waited for the door to reappear. When it did, she let out a cry.
Sylas lay on the other side of the gate, sprawled on the stone floor, eyes closed.
* * *
Aurek floated the unconscious Navigator back to the Palace, and Tyldak helped lay him down in Tamsin’s bed. An urgent psychic call summoned the College’s healer, a blonde maiden by the name of Toss-Stone. Sylas was beginning to come around by the time she arrived.
“I’ve seen this before,” she pronounced calmly. “It’s a lingering variant of husk-shock. The Master Healer, Pool, suffered from it every time he awoke from wrapstuff. Your body has been preserved outside of time, but your soul has spent so long apart from it that you cannot properly manipulate it.”
“Manipulate it?” Tamsin murmured fretfully. “You make it sound like a bow or a loom.”
Toss-Stone shrugged. “It’s a vessel. Like a pony or a ship or even the Palace. Directing it takes skill. And like any skill, it fades with lack of practice. I am impressed you stayed on your feet as long as you did, High One. You must have been very driven. But you’re exhausted now. I can give you fresh strength, but until you have remastered your shell, it will fail quickly.”
“The pain…” Sylas grimaced, struggling to sit up. “I knew there would be pain… but I did not think it would be so much.”
“Pain?” Toss-Stone moved closer. “Where?”
“My legs… my s-shoulders…” he seemed to struggle for the proper words. “Here…” he gripped the back of his skull.
“A little muscle strain,” Toss-Stone pronounced after a light touch. “Understandable. You are under a great deal of stress.”
Sylas clutched at his belly. “Here is the worst. Like… burning. Like something is eating a hole in me.”
Toss-Stone smiled gently. “That’s called ‘hunger.’”
Sylas looked at Tamsin. “How do you bear it?”
“We eat,” Toss-Stone answered for her.
Sylas’s lip curled back in disgust. Toss-Stone reached into her bag and drew out a long-necked bottle of blue clearstone. “Here. The Master Healer could never abide solid food after a long hibernation either. He always swore by this, and it’s all Timmain consumes these days.”
“What is it?” Tamsin asked.
“Feedbroth. The same potion that kept our Father of Memory alive all those years he sat entranced in Blue Mountain That Was.”
Sylas took the bottle and unstoppered it. He sniffed the rim. “I know this scent.”
“Timmain said it was all the High Ones consumed during their years among the stars,” Toss-Stone explained. “Now it is a bit of an acquired taste…” she trailed off as Sylas downed the drink in three convulsive swallows. “Or not.”
Sylas coughed and sputtered, spitting up a mouthful of the milky liquid on the floor. “That’s ghastly.”
“As I said.”
“Not the taste, the process!” Sylas continued to cough and wipe at his chin. “The muscular convulsions, the ingestion of foreign matter… I can feel it inside me. And the risk of inhaling it – the coordination required. You risk death even as you seek to replenish your life-force!”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Toss-Stone remarked.
“You’ll get used to it,” Tamsin soothed.
“That feedbroth should keep him going until tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.”
“So little?”
“Nothing is wasted. I will prepare some more to take with you. I met your healer Rain once, but I can’t remember if he knows how to make the stuff. If you’d like, I can send one of my students with you to teach him. Or you can try moving on to other food in another eight-of-days or so… if you’re ready, High One. But nothing too solid for at least a moon-dance.”
Tamsin nodded. “Root pudding. You can have root pudding with a little browned sugar. It’s my favorite on cool, damp days.”
“I wouldn’t rush things,” Toss-Stone said. “His digestion is out of practice as well, remember.”
Sylas looked abjectly miserable. Tamsin laid a hand on his shoulder protectively. “But… he’ll get better, won’t he?”
“In time, with perseverence, he will adjust,” the healer promised.
“I am so weary,” Sylas complained.
“A little sleep would serve you well. But I’d suggest you not sleep more than half the day’s hours. If you mean to adapt to this world, you must force yourself to use your body.” She smiled at Tamsin. “For both your sakes. One cannot ignore the needs of the flesh, after all. Not a need like this.”
Tamsin’s brow knit in puzzlement. Toss-Stone gave a little bow of the head and withdrew, murmuring something about giving them time alone.
Sylas shifted on the bed, trying to lie back down. Tamsin helped him settle on his side. She propped a pillow under his head and wiped the lingering traces of feedbroth from his chin with the back of her hand.
“Do you feel any better now?” she asked.
“My head aches,” Sylas murmured. “And… deep inside me… I still feel a burning emptiness. Not the same as the hunger pangs. It’s not my shell, I think. It’s my soul… it hungers… burns.” He scowled, deep in thought. “It needs….”
“You want to return to the spirit world,” Tamsin guessed.
“Not alone! I could not bear it.” **V’Nan, you know what I desire. Just as I know it cannot be. Not yet.**
Tamsin summoned a wan smile. “We will dreamwalk again, together. Once you’re more settled. It’ll be just as it was… it’ll be better, because now we can be together in both worlds.” She saw the sorrow in his gaze and added hastily, “And… and we can find other souls to keep you company… when you need to rest. Other elves who walk between the two worlds. There are many elves here at the College who can help: Aurek, Weatherbird… and we could go to Homestead, too. Winnowill is there. So are Kit and Chani. They were all dead once, but they came back. And it was hard for them at first, but they learned how. They could help you. And then there’s Haken – he’s a Firstcomer too.”
Sylas seemed to flinch at the name.
“Was Timmain right? Was it selfish of me to call you–”
**No! Do not believe it. Do not believe anything she says! Her words are poison!**
Tamsin knelt down by his bedside. “What happened between you two?”
But Sylas shook his head. “I cannot… you… you should not… I will not burden you with it.”
“It’s no burden. I want to understand.”
“How can you, when I cannot?” He drew a long breath and let his eyes fall closed. Tamsin thought he might have lapsed into sleep again. But his sending was sharp in her mind as he asked: **Who is this Haken?**
**You know of him. You’ve seen him in my dreams. He’s Winnowill’s father. Lord of Homestead.**
**His shape, his name, his life… all belong to this world. Who was he before?**
**I don’t know. He was Timmain’s chief rival in the days following the crash… he tried to seize the Palace for himself, but he could never defeat the humans who’d taken it over. He… he was one of the Circle,** she added after a moment’s thought. **There was a rhyme about it… I could ask Pike when we return to the Holt.**
Sylas sat up abruptly. **The Circle of Nine? He was part of it?**
“Oh! Of course, the Nine and the Navigators each had their own Circles, didn’t they? You must have known him – or known of him, at least. Didn’t each of the Navigators correspond to one of the Nine? I thought that’s what Sunstream–”
He seized her shoulders. “He, you said. A male. Which one?”
“What?”
“It took nine to make the Circle. Four females, five males. Their names… when I was cocooned we spoke in a tongue so far removed from this one, I doubt I could recognize their names now. But their purposes – I remember those. Motion, Sight, Hearing, Balance, Passion. Which one was Haken’s?”
Tamsin could only shake her head. “I don’t know what you mean. Maybe the Scroll could–”
But Sylas wasn’t looking at her. His gaze had turned inward, his eyes burning with an inner light.
She felt her ears pop.
* * *
“No Bluestar?” Swift asked Vaya as they stood in the entryway of the Palace. Outside the first rays of dawn were just beginning to light up the Painted Mountains. “Is he still asleep?”
Vaya rolled her eyes. “Cursed if I know. I haven’t seen him in an eight-of-days at least. I think he’s off playing at quests again, with his human friends. He’s usually got a pack of the youngsters at High Hope following him around.”
Dewshine shuddered at the thought. “A cub his age, alone with humans? Is that wise?”
Vaya laughed. “The humans here are harmless enough. And when has ‘wise’ ever mattered to that little buck? Ah, he’ll be fine. Weatherbird keeps him on a leash through the astral plane, and Cheipar hunts him down if he goes missing for too long. Come to think of it, he gets into trouble far less now that he’s got his five-fingered pack. I just worry about that girl… the way she looks at him, it’s not going to end well.”
Swift smiled knowingly. “He’s at an age for the bloodsong, isn’t he?”
Dewshine started. “He can’t be more than eight-and-four, surely!”
Vaya cocked an eyebrow. “You’re lost in the Now again, Wolfrider. He’ll be two eights come the summer.”
Dewshine shook her head. “Time passes so much more quickly now. Have you noticed?”
Swift nodded in sympathy. “Gets worse every century. Makes me wonder how those High Ones manage.”
“I should be getting back,” Vaya said. “See if Toss-Stone needs help bottling all that feedbroth. You planning to head back to the Great Holt today?”
“I suppose we’d better see how the Navigator is faring after his–” Swift broke off as she looked up at the open doors of the Palace. Dewshine turned her head just to time to see them slam shut and merge back into a blank wall.
The floor shivered underneath her feet and she felt the sudden pressure change deep in her ears.
“Motherdrukker!” Swift swore, stamping her foot. “Not again!”
* * *
“This place… I feel stronger already,” Sylas said, as he got to his feet. Instead of making for the door and the hallways leading towards the main entrance, he simply laid his hand on the nearest wall and a door-sized hole opened before him.
“What place? Where are we? Sylas, wait!” Tamsin chased after him as he cut through one room after another, on the most direct course to the open air. Most were fortunately empty, but Tamsin had to murmur apologies to a half-dressed and stammering Quicksilver as Sylas tramped through her den.
He breached the outermost wall of the Palace and a wall of heavy air with a tang of sea salt rushed over them. It felt to Tamsin like having a wet rag slapped over her nose and mouth, and she struggled not to cough. She felt the heavy pull of gravity as she tried to take her first step, and her sense of balance completely abandoned her. She swayed and stumbled as if drunk.
Sylas, by contrast, only seemed to grow stronger. He walked with a straight-backed purpose towards the nearby collection of whimsically-shaped stone buildings arranged in a great half-circle under a pearly-white sky.
“Timmorn’s blood,” Tamsin whispered. “We’re on Homestead.”
She limped after Sylas, her feet dragging on the ground. Before them rose the village of Haven, shaped from the wine-colored stone of the world and heavily ornamented with glittering crystals. Prismatic pendants hung from wires like the painted lanterns of old Oasis; spirals and swirls decorated the walls and roofs. In places the different veins of crystal formed intricate fractal patterns like the branches of a tree. And the largest branches all led towards the center of the half-circle, where the teardrop-shaped Ark loomed large, the crown jewel of Haven.
Of course, Tamsin realized belatedly. It wasn’t ordinary crystal.
Nor was it an ordinary tree growing in the center of the village. At first she took it for some Homesteadian variant of an oak. But as she drew closer, she saw its trunk and branches were made of the same wine-red stone, with leaves of delicate starstone, tinted the blue of the Abodean sky. A half-dozen elves were reclining under it, gazing up at the crystal leaves, meditating perhaps. They broke off their reveries as they saw Sylas approach. Three of them, dressed in blood-red snakeskins, Tamsin recognized from her visits to Oasis.
Beyond the tree, a few elves were playing a ball game on the flat ground of the courtyard, and others mingled under the archways of the portico under the Ark’s shadow. A quick glance up at the sun confirmed it was just past midday – if the Haven-folk kept time at all like their kin in Oasis, most would either be working in the fields or enjoying a day-sleep in their dens.
Carrun slowly approached Sylas from the shade of the tree. “Who… who are you…?”
“Haken,” Sylas rasped. “Where is he?”
“Lord Haken…” Carrun looked to Tamsin in confusion. “Apologies, but he is‒”
Sylas closed his eyes and drew in a sharp breath. “Never mind,” he muttered, and pushed onward, towards the portico. When Tamsin tried to follow him, Carrun caught her arm.
**Tamsin, what are you doing here? What is he? He almost feels like…. like Lord Haken. Like a High One!**
“I have to go,” Tamsin said. “I’ll explain later.”
She reached Sylas under the portico. It led into a cavernous atrium, illuminated by skylights and the soft glow of many starstone glyphs. Sylas was swaying slightly on his feet, his eyes fixed on the ceiling high above their heads.
“It’s like Tallest Spire, back at Oasis,” Tamsin breathed. “Sylas? Sylas, what are you listening for?”
Sylas’s brow was furrowed in intense concentration. She thought she heard him whisper, “Please.”
A short staircase led to the second floor landing, and the peristyled walks above them. Tamsin caught sight of a long, lean figure moving between the columns. An open sending rang out in the atrium.
**It cannot be….**
Sylas pursed his lips and let out the strangest whistle, followed by a series of clicks deep in his throat. His face was a picture of anguished longing. The last time Tamsin had seen him like this was when she had said goodbye in the dream world.
Haken stepped out onto the second floor landing. His face mirrored that pained look of mingled fear and want.
The two High Ones stared at each other in silence. Sylas was trembling again, as he had when he’d confronted Timmain. His unblinking eyes brimmed.
“It is you,” Haken whispered.
He swept down the steps to Sylas, raising his hand. Fearing a physical attack would supplant the psychic one, Tamsin felt her hand reach instinctively for the dagger she used to carry at her hip. But Haken stopped a hair’s breath from the Navigator, and his trembling hand hovered just over one cheek.
Lightly, almost reverently, his fingers traced the line of his cheekbone. Then Haken wrapped his hand behind Sylas’s bald head and drew him into an embrace.
Sylas clung to Haken’s shoulders, all but sobbing in relief. He kept repeating the same whistles and clicks deep in his throat, and the sound drew a soft moan from the Lord of Homestead.
At length Haken drew back, just enough to touch his forehead to the Navigator’s.
“Haken…” he whispered. “I’m called Haken now.”
“Sylas.”
Haken broke into a grin like Tamsin had never seen before, in her all her visits to old Oasis. “Sylas. It suits you. Oh, my bond, our shapes have changed so much, but my soul would still know yours anywhere.”
Elfquest copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2016 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.