are incredible, Mother, but Elya is special. I don’t think that any of these would have saved me the same way she did. Do you?”
Corinn ran her palm over his head, all the answer she wished to give.
Still, when Aliver and Shen shot up into the air on Kohl’s back, Aaden clawed at her, begging to follow. Po, competitive as always, was eager to oblige. The four of them swept down from the palace, over the terraced layers of the city. They swept over the lower town and then beat their way higher. Corinn thought of the day when all four Akaran children had ridden horseback with their father. They had galloped out from the town and along the winding road over the island’s hills, down to that beach, the one she saw hundreds of feet below her now. That had been a memorable day. Perhaps, for these children, this was another such day. She hoped so.
They flew out to Haven’s Rock, where they stood in the wind and listened to Aliver eulogize his former tutor, Jason, and Leeka Alain of the Northern Guard, the first to slay a Numrek and the only one to ever run down fleeing sorcerers. He thanked the tutor for being the first to draw the map of the world in Aliver’s mind, for being such a lover of knowledge and a keeper of history. “It was he who first challenged my princely arrogance. I should have thanked him more for that before this.” About Leeka, he said, “And here, after years of service, his last deed. He returned to us and said the words that saved us for the now.” Looking at Corinn, he added, “In the end, he did what mattered. For that, he will not be forgotten.”
After that, they returned to joy. They dove down from heights like seabirds. They skimmed out over the water, the waves growing more and more pronounced as the sea grew deeper. Aaden shouted above the rushing air, “It’s wonderful, Mother. Let’s go faster. This is like Mena said!” Corinn did not know quite what he meant and she could not ask. She could go faster, though. She urged Po to do so.
A nd then all too quickly it was night. How tired they all were, or should be but were not really. The notion of sleeping hours away seemed so wasteful. When Aaden proposed that they stay together throughout the entire night, Corinn was amazed at how easily that problem was solved. Of course. Why sleep? There were not enough hours left to sleep! Listening to the two children’s cheers, Corinn could not help but think of that day long ago when her father promised them a late-night snowball fight. That night never came to be. This one would.
They had the servants stoke the fire in the center of a small amphitheater on Aliver’s terrace. Night sky clear and chilly above them, they curled up among the blankets and cushions and furs. So many things to remember: the shape of Shen’s teeth when her head was thrown back in laughter. The way Benabe could make any sentence into a song just by putting music in her voice. The stories Barad told, the tree trunk of a man, stone eyed, holding the children rapt with his deep voice.
Corinn would always remember the comfort she took when she slipped Aaden’s head from her lap, thinking he was asleep. She tried to move away, but he said, “Mother, it’s not over, is it?” She could not speak and his eyes were closed, but he did not need to hear or see her answer. “You’ll fix it. I know you will.”
A little later, after sleep finally overpowered both children beside the fire pit, the two monarchs sat beside each other on the stone bench that looked out over the harbor. They had both read yet another message, this one from Mena, describing what she intended to do. Corinn tried to reach out to her across the distance. She was tired enough that it almost worked. She did shoot up out of her body and above the palace. She flew, wingless, toward the north. But as with that time she had searched in vain for Dariel, she eventually came to a halt, hanging in the air, no feeling for where to go or how to reach her.
“Mena is a warrior. If anyone can hold back the Auldek, she can,” Aliver said. Then he asked her more about dream travel, about what it felt like to separate a soul from a body, and about what she knew of how the Auldek could hold spare life forces inside themselves. She had Rhrenna bring her documents the league had provided, and together the siblings talked through the fantastical horror of it. “What greater form of slavery could there be?” Aliver asked. “Enslaving not bodies but souls.”
Corinn did not answer, for she could think of none.
As Corinn had wanted to speak with her brother without other men’s voices, she had asked Barad and Hanish to stay among the others. Instead, she spoke with a quill and parchment. It made her choose her words carefully. She wrote, I know. I just wish I could have seen her again, and Dariel. I sent them both so far away. Now I can’t understand why I didn’t want them near me and Aaden. Don’t make Mena wait long. Go as fast as you can. Reach her. Fight beside her. If I could, I would go with you.
“I’ll get to her. I’ll do everything I can to end this before I end myself.”
I’ll do the same.
Aliver slid a hand over hers, held it there a moment. She did not like the quiet hopelessness of the gesture. She pulled her hand away, wrote, and turned the page so he could see.
I know what to do. I have the book.
It took a moment for this to fully sink in. When it did, his eyes came back to hers, not so hopeless anymore. “You have it?”
Corinn nodded, and then playfully nudged him on the shoulder.
He understood. “Of course, you have it,” he said. “You didn’t send the Santoth to it. You sent them away from it. My clever sister.”
The way lines formed at the edge of her eyes was the only way she could indicate that she was smiling. She saw that Aliver saw it, and was glad.
“What will you do with the book? Can you destroy it?”
She shook her head and wrote, It’s not mine to destroy.
Aliver thought about that for a time. “All right, it’s not yours to destroy. It was here before us and it might be wrong to take it from the world completely. That could be another mistake. I understand that. What, then?”
Return it.
“Return it to whom?”
To the worm.
“I don’t understand.”
Corinn looked at him, and then at where Barad slept. She seemed to consider waking him, but then shook the thought away. Pulling the tablet onto her lap, she leaned to write her response. With her posture, she told Aliver not to begin reading until she was done. She wrote for a long time, and then slid the tablet back into his hands. She moved away to the railing as he bent to read.
She had written: From the day I began to study The Song, I felt a living force protest. In my mind it was a great worm. I sometimes imagined it rising from the floor of the sea, its jaws so large they could close around all of the isle of Acacia. I knew it to be angry with me, and I thought it a foulthing.
I know now that’s not right. That creature was always telling me to return the book to it. That creature is its protector. It was of the world before Elenet. Edifus called on it to devour the book, to eat it and hold it inside its body. That’s what it did. Tinhadin should have left it there.
“How do you know all this?”
She pressed her fingers to her chest, indicating that she felt it in her heart. I know it, she wrote.
“How do you take the book to this worm?”
I find it. I don’t think it will be hard. It is somewhere beneath the Gray Slopes. Po will fly me there.
The two siblings sat in stillness for a while. She thought of Leeka Alain in the moment just before his death. What do you think Leeka was trying to tell us?
Aliver shook his head. That was all the answer he had. Eventually, Corinn asked the question Aaden would have wanted her to. She wrote, Might it be untrue?
Aliver did not have to ask what she was referring to. “I know I should wonder that myself, but I don’t. I feel the truth of it. I feel nearer to returning to where I should be. I feel no fear of it. Sadness, yes, but… I don’t doubt that Dagon wrote the truth.”
She wrote, Nor do I. I wish the first time he was truthful wasn’t this. So much conspiring. He and I-we’ve conspired our lives away. That’s the only part of this that feels right. I couldn’t live with this guilt. The Santoth. The vintage. Jason and Kelis and Barad. The things I did to everyone. I couldn’t live with it, but knowing of my approaching death helps. We have little time and much to do.
Seek Paddel, the vintner on Prios. Make him tell you everything about the vintage. It’s mist by another name, Aliver, another of my crimes. Make him tell you.
Aliver nodded. “I will. What of Elya’s children? They’re monsters, Corinn. I know you didn’t intend that, but-”
