them through time. “How do we get back?” He had not intended to stay with this woman. The wounds and memories were still too fresh in his mind and heart, and he did not want to cast his lot with a stranger. It would not be fair to her, or to him.
The woman-who told him her name was Jisanne-looked down at the strange glassy shard she held. “Ancient sailors used this navigation crystal to take them home. This time period, this version of Athas, was the home of a powerful ship’s captain.” Though her skin was covered with bruises and she walked with obvious pain, Jisanne set off down the slope, following the stream. “I’ve brought us here. Look around you. Are you so anxious to be back in your harsh world?”
He found the fresh, green, living landscape remarkable… but its very strangeness was intimidating. “I have lost my family, and lost my interest. Little matters to me anymore. But I… will stay with you until I’m sure you are safe.”
She regarded him with a hard expression. “I have taken care of myself for a long time, and I don’t need a protector.” She drew a deep breath. “But you are here with me now. I prefer this time and place, when the world was young and healthy-but my magic isn’t strong enough to make it permanent. Come, we don’t have much time.”
Koram followed her down the slope to a wide blue river course-clear, swift-flowing water dotted with colorful sails of trading ships, oared dromonds from the city guard, even pleasure craft. He recognized it. “This is the estuary!”
“The way it once was.” Jisanne led him along the shore. “This is how Athas was meant to be.”
His heart felt leaden, wishing his wife and son could see this. “I suppose if we are trapped here… I would not complain.” He could make a new home here, a new life far from his memories.
“It won’t last.” Jisanne scanned the shore, looking for something. “I stole life energy for this spell. Defiling magic is the only way to activate the navigation crystal, and it will fade soon enough.”
He was uneasy with her casual use of the corrupting power, but he also knew that otherwise he would be dying just then, his body pierced with halfling arrows and blades. Jisanne had saved both of them. He owed her a debt of gratitude.
When he had turned his back on Balic, he had severed all ties, washing his hands of the evil government that had destroyed his family and the fickle people who had shown him no loyalty, no support. Though he had little to live for, once he’d left the arena, he did not want to die. Given time, perhaps Koram would find a reason that meant something-and someone who deserved it.
After they had rushed along through the peaceful forest, Jisanne let out a happy cry and hurried through the underbrush to a small rowboat tied to a drooping tree trunk. “Come, we must head south as fast as we can, while the spell lasts. Unless you’d rather travel across the silt?”
Though he didn’t know what she meant, her urgency was plain. Koram climbed into the boat, took the oars, then guided them out into the fast-flowing estuary. “Where are we going?”
“South-to Arkhold. To my home.”
After a lifetime of considering desolation to be the normal state of the world, he marveled at the bounty of water, the moisture in the air, the fractured-gold flashes of sunlight on the river’s ripples. As he rowed vigorously, water splashed on the caked dust and blood on his skin; it felt cool and strange as the fresh breezes dried it quickly. A strange stirring occurred in his chest, and the weight on his shoulders seemed less heavy. Koram began to feel alive again.
As they made good time along the current, Jisanne told him her story, and he shared his own. She didn’t seem at all astonished to hear of Praetor Yvoluk’s cruelty or how the fickle people of Balic had so easily turned on him. They had done the same to her. Jisanne explained how ancient sorcerer-kings had abused dark powers, draining the world year after year, spell after spell, war after war.
“Defiling magic did this to Athas-and now I have used it to bring us back to a time before the world was destroyed.” She shook her head in disgust at herself. “Ironic, isn’t it? In order to visit an Athas untainted by the parasitical magic, I need to drain more life force from the land.”
“Either way, we are here.” Koram rowed as hard as he could, carrying them far down the watercourse. They traveled for many leagues before the magic weakened. As Jisanne felt it fade, she urged him to pull the boat to the shallows.
With a wrenching disappointment, they watched the green shore and blue current curl and evaporate, changing from a verdant paradise to a barren brown wasteland. The Athas Koram was used to seeing. He felt suddenly hollow and lost, and he had to bite back a bitter cry.
The small boat ground ashore and fell apart with the sudden weight of age, disintegrating into dry and ancient splinters. The two found themselves in the rocks on the edge of a bone-dry canyon. “We’ll have to walk from here. Arkhold isn’t far,” Jisanne said.
He hesitated, looking around at the stark rocks and dry desert. “I did not intend to stay.”
She looked uncertain. “You saved my life. I prefer being alone, and I never said I wanted company… But stay and rest. You can find your own path tomorrow.”
Together, they trudged back to her skeletal ship, the dry docks, and the silt-buried old harbor city. He gave a gruff answer. “No place else to be.”
Dust-shrouded Arkhold was dead, empty… and peaceful. When she and Koram reached her makeshift home aboard Horizon Finder, Jisanne fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. It took days for her to recover from the magic she had used, and so Koram did not leave. He tended her, brought her food and water, and kept watch against the ever-present dangers of the desert.
She could not shake the disheartened realization of how willingly she had turned to defiling magic to summon the past centuries of Athas. When possible, she would use her own blood to work the spell, drawing upon willingly surrendered life energy to trigger the crystal. A spell could be more permanent if not forced and stolen-but she had to use what she could. Jisanne knew she would do it again. Every moment she experienced in that long-lost period was worth the sacrifice, even if she had to steal the energy from other living creatures. It could rapidly become too easy…
The gladiator from Balic wanted nothing from her, put no obligations on her, posed no threat. She had come to this place intentionally, hiding from her past; the other strangers she had encountered here were greedy, driven, dangerous. Koram, though, had cut himself off from the strings that bound him to his city and he had let the hot winds of circumstance blow him wherever they wished. And they had brought him to her.
While she continued to recover, Koram trudged off into the rugged land nearby. He returned a day later with three large iguanas he had caught, a pouch of leathery-shelled turtle eggs, and several wrinkled gourds that held water. If not for him, Jisanne doubted she could have survived.
For his own part, he also seemed to be healing just by staying with her in the empty quiet. The two kept their distance from each other, kept their silence, but eventually they talked more, surprised to find how much they were alike. Though the man carried no happiness within him, at least he seemed to find an inner contentment being there. In the evenings he would sit with her, and gradually opened up, talking more and more.
“I had to shut out all of my pain and anger just to survive in the arena. But I don’t like to be so empty. When you showed me the past, you made me see how healthy this world once was… and could be again. Maybe my life can become whole again, as well.” He hung his head. The bristles of hair had begun to regrow from his shaved scalp. “I will hold onto that hope.”
With a wistful sigh, Jisanne thought of the glorious, vibrant past. “If we could return there, I would turn my back on all of Athas without a second’s regret… the way you turned away from Balic.”
Koram made a rumbling sound in his chest. “I would do it in a second.”
The peace could last only so long.
Just as the first flames of dawn scorched the Sea of Silt, a bellowing voice echoed through Arkhold. “Gladiator Koram, come out and meet your master-and your death! The smell of your treachery makes you easy to follow.”
Belowdecks in the petrified old sailing ship, Koram recognized the voice, a sound that had come from beyond the grave. He leaped off his pallet and grabbed his sword, but did not have time to strap on his armor. Koram said to Jisanne, “Hide here. He doesn’t want you.”
She sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. “Who is it? Who tracked you here?”
“Praetor Yvoluk. He survived somehow. I suppose a soul as twisted as his cannot be easily crushed.” He
