She crossed to Guyrin and pulled him upright. “Come on, magic man. We can do this.”
“Best to start now before we venture into the main corridors,” Gamarron said. “Tychus, stay close and lead the way. Everyone keep to the edges and stay quiet. Let’s not push the illusion any harder than we have to.”
Nira stood with Guyrin in the midst of the others and steeled herself, putting her hand on Guy’s shoulder. Her hand went numb immediately, and the pain behind her eyes flared into bright lights. Guyrin grunted in pain, and they stumbled into Kest. “You’ll have to guide us,” she groaned. “I can barely see.” His comforting hand wrapped around her bicep, gently tugging her toward the door.
“On we go,” Gamarron declared, and on they went. Nira saw very little of their path, her pain consuming her. Her world was soon restricted to pulses of lightning shooting up her arm and through her skull. She couldn’t even feel Kest’s hand pulling her along. Sometimes they paused and sometimes they went, but she couldn’t quite focus in on the words that the others whispered between themselves, mere snatches of sound devoid of meaning but beating against the feverish skin of her face with the force of sand-packed waves. She floated in a sea of pain, and the only words that had any meaning at all were nothing here. She could feel blood trickling from her nose now, but it meant no more than any of the noise that surrounded her.
And then she lost it. A bolt of pain as bright as the Pure Light itself descended from on high and smote her right between the eyes. Gasping, she covered her eyes with her hands and fell to the floor. Her thoughts went spinning away into nothingness, and she wondered if she had just doomed them all. Would Guyrin die, or go crazy without her anchoring him? Would the discord destroy them?
Time passed, or it didn’t, or somewhere in between, and she dreamed. She saw a sprout placed in the earth by smooth, beautiful hands as dark as her own. The hands had made the sprout, somehow. Those hands had come from the depths, from the tunnels, from the place beneath… and she was drawn to them. She wanted those hands to hold her close as her own mother never had. She saw Naga bowing all around as the planting ceremony began. They loved the owner of those hands; they served long and well – and in return they were given a home on the surface. The hands caressed the sprout and shaped it – whose hands? I want to see – and it grew in a span of minutes. Rooms hollowed themselves out with mathematical precision as it expanded – so fast! – rooms and hallways and tunnels and access panels all perfectly shaped by a mind without peer. The Naga praised those hands and bowed themselves down to kiss them. Aeons passed in her mind within the perfect tree home and others were grown in the same manner, always with praise, love, and devotion. War and peace and time and pain and love all melded together across uncountable years… and then suddenly, the hands were gone.
After the dream, Nira’s white-hot pain faded gradually to red, and then to gray, and at some point she could feel her body again. She was on her back, and she carefully removed her hands from her eyes. They didn’t burst out of her skull, so she counted the move as a success. Blood smeared her palms, and she realized that it must have seeped out of her tear ducts. I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen. Whatever it was Guyrin had done, it was massively more taxing that he had thought. If just touching him had done this to her, she wondered if he was even still alive. Her thoughts drifted back to her dream. I saw the history of this tree. Someone made it. I saw it all.
Color and definition returned to the world, and Kest’s concerned face hove into view above her. “Have to hide,” she croaked at him.
“It’s taken care of,” he assured her. “Guyrin fainted, and then you fell over, and the Naga fellow found us a place to hide.” He looked around, his movements furtive. “It’s a waiting chamber for dignitaries, he said. He acted like putting us here was a great joke, but it’s just a little nook off the hallway with a curtain. It doesn’t feel safe at all.” He glanced about to where the others were huddled. Renna was talking in low, soothing tones to Guyrin, who had his teeth bared and was shaking his head. His cheeks were hollowed out, fresh blood poured from his nose, and a large red tumor stood out from one of his temples. It hadn’t been there the last time she saw him. The discord. His ramblings about tumors and lesions took on new meaning. Nira couldn’t decide whether she was more disturbed by the ugly red thing on his face or the sight of Renna trying to be comforting.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” Kest confided to her softly, worry creasing his smooth forehead. Without thinking, she reached up to smooth the lines away. He held very still at her touch, like a hart startled and ready to bolt.
“Probably not,” she concurred, marveling at how her pulsing pain muted as she laid her fingers on his smooth cheek. How often does he have to shave? When has he found the time as we’ve crawled through the swamps? She met his eyes and pulled her hand away shyly as she realized that the others were not far away. She wasn’t thinking right. “I’d really rather not die tonight,” she admitted.
“That just became less likely, I’m sorry to say,” Tychus sighed as he swept into their little nook. “I sneaked up to the Crown Bower where they keep the God Stone.” He
