Vinthor glanced back at the Commoner crowd on the lakeshore. “Then I had better go talk to them.”
“ We had better, my love,” said Beth. She held out his hand and pulled him to his feet. “ We had better.”
Karl began the long walk through the ceremonial gardens to the Palace. But he stopped at the gondola of the airship on his way. “With luck, we’ll avoid civil war,” he said to Anton. “Go back to your own people, tell them what happened.” He gave the Outsider a hard look. “Will they invade?”
“I don’t know,” Anton said. “It’s very difficult to get a large force this far inland. You have a few weeks’ grace, at least. I’d recommend sending a formal delegation to Elkbone. I’ll let the Lord Mayor know you’re coming.”
Karl nodded. “Do that. And if no formal delegation comes…” His lips tightened. “Then the Kingdom of Evrenfels no longer exists and only chaos remains. Take control and welcome.”
Anton nodded again.
“Now get out of here,” Karl said. “Before someone decides to put a few crossbow bolts into you or your flying machine… or both. Take Brenna. Take her someplace safe. And tell her…” He looked down into the gondola at the sleeping girl, remembering the warmth of her body against his. “Tell her…” He paused. “Tell her I said good-bye,” he finished finally.
“I will,” Anton said quietly.
Karl turned away and resumed walking toward the Palace and the waiting ranks of guards. His heart leaped with relief and renewed hope as he saw, among the blue uniforms, Teran’s face. At least I have one ally there.
Behind him he heard the roar of the burner and, a moment later, the throbbing of the propeller; but as the airship lifted from the ground and flew away into the unknown west, he didn’t turn to watch it go.
Brenna opened her eyes.
For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Her head lay on something soft, but not a pillow-more like a rolled-up coat; the blanket that covered her was rough and scratchy; and her bed seemed to have turned into a wicker basket.
Above her a tongue of fire roared into leaping, flickering life, lighting up the inside of a vast blue loaf-shape, and as though it had also lit up the inside of her mind, she suddenly remembered everything
… everything up until the moment when pain had struck her like a hammer blow and the world had been swallowed by blinding blue light.
She tensed, but there was no pain now beyond the ordinary discomforts of cramped limbs and a distended bladder. She sat up.
Anton stood at the tiller of the airship on the other side of the burner, his face haggard with exhaustion in the gray light before dawn. Behind him, a few late stars still burned, and the propeller spun and bellowed its steady, thrumming roar. “Anton?” Brenna said, her voice sounding more like a frog’s croak in her ears.
Anton’s eyes, which had been focused on the horizon, jerked down toward her, and the utter relief and joy on his face as he saw her warmed her more than the blanket or the still-roaring burner.
He pushed a lever to cut off the burner, tied off the tiller, and came around to her, falling to his knees beside her and gathering her to him in a hug that also seemed to contain more than the usual amount of warmth. She hugged him back, closing her eyes and laying her head on his shoulder for a long moment.
He showed no signs of letting go, and she had no real complaints about that, but nevertheless after a moment she pushed him away. “What happened?” she said. “Where’s Karl?”
“Back at the Palace, trying to keep the ex-Mageborn and Commoners from murdering each other,” he said.
“Ex-Mageborn?” Brenna remembered the pain, the blue light. “It worked?”
“It worked,” Anton said softly. “We should be crossing the Anomaly now. And… well, take a look.” He helped her to her feet, and she peered over the edge of the gondola.
The prairie below them was unmarked snow… but there was a line of drifts and ice, straight as though laid down with a ruler, stretching away as far as she could see to north and south.
The Great Barrier had vanished. The Hidden Kingdom was hidden no longer.
She felt dizzy, though it had nothing to do with her long sleep. She had thought she’d believed what Mother Northwind had told her, but now she realized she hadn’t, not really. Even seeing magic bounce off of Karl hadn’t fully brought home to her what they were trying to do. But this…
The Barrier, which had stood for eight centuries, had disappeared as though it had never existed, taking magic with it. The world would never be the same again. A world in which she flew in an airship across the longsealed borders of Evrenfels was completely different than the one in which she had always lived… and very nearly died.
There were children’s stories of visitors from other worlds, sometimes said to lie among the stars, sometimes deep under the Earth, sometimes… she smiled weakly… from outside the Great Barrier. She had never expected one of those stories to come true.. . never expected that she would be both the one who met the visitor from another world, and an otherworldly visitor herself.
The line of the vanished Barrier was behind them. She was Outside. She was flying, a thing no one from the Kingdom had ever believed possible. And she was with a young man who had grown up and lived all his life out here.
It was all true, and all strange, and though she felt a little dizzy as the implications rushed at her, it was also utterly exhilarating.
Anton had seized her arm when he saw her waver; now she tucked her arm inside his and leaned her head against his shoulder again. “A whole new world,” she said. “Will you show it to me?”
“There’s nothing I’d like better,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her, a soft, lingering kiss that warmed her so thoroughly she thought she would never be cold again.
Behind them the sun broke the horizon in a blaze of orange fire. Below them, the prairie snow spread out all around, unbroken. Ahead of them, the land and sky still lay in shadow…
… but a shadow that would soon be lit by the sun.
The kiss ended. Brenna let out her breath in a contented sigh, and snuggled against Anton, whose arms tightened around her.
Long ago, her Commoner nursemaid had told her that with every sunrise a new world was born.
Brenna, gazing down from the airship, watched that saying come true.
