“How?”
“Well, the separation of the worlds might be considered unnatural, and we were summoned to stop it, so this could be seen as a good quest. Morgana certainly seemed to think so. But according to Merlin, Morgana had done many bad things and had plans for new ones, which was the whole reason he cast the spell.”
Matt noted, “So her summoning should have failed. Any guesses why it did not?”
“Yes. I think part of it was the ambiguity of this, but the principal reason is that Stonehenge is not a real Quest Ring. Merlin implied that the builders were both humans and fae during an earlier period of cooperation, and that the goal was to establish a stronger foothold for fae here on Earth. They built Stonehenge at a doorway between the Earth and fae worlds.”
Looking at her intently, as if fascinated, Jack asked, “It’s not a proper ring, but she still summoned you to it?”
“Yes. Morgana turned it into a kind of makeshift Quest Ring. It bears some resemblance to one. But Earth had no genuine rings. Still doesn’t. I don’t think we had ever heard of the world.”
Eric asked, “How did Morgana know to do this with Stonehenge, or the summoning spell, or even who you guys are?”
She had wondered the same thing and only had partial answers and some educated guesswork. “According to Merlin, both he and Morgana had the power of prophecy, and we don’t know what they saw or how it has played out, but Morgana could learn the summoning spell this way. After we arrived and had a moment alone, Soliander revealed having seen Morgana’s face in his dreams days earlier. He thought nothing of it until after we came to Earth, when he recognized her. We surmised she had gotten the spell from his mind during the dream and turned Stonehenge into a Quest Ring, one that is missing certain aspects.”
The rogue said, “Like the morality matrix that would have prevented her from summoning you.”
“Yes. And the keystone.”
“Keystone?” Eric asked.
Matt’s eyes suddenly lit up. “The keystone! Of course. It is made from soclarin ore.” He turned to the others. “Remember when I stuck the end of Soliander’s staff into that hole in the Quest Rings? That’s the keystone I’m inserting it into. Only Soliander’s staff works on that. The rest of the ring is not of soclarin.”
Eriana nodded. “Yes. Morgana summoned us, and in theory, they bound us to the quest just like any other. That part of the summoning spell worked. She told us the quest was to return the pendant to Stonehenge, because if we didn’t, Merlin’s spell, already cast, would remove magic and fae creatures from Earth. The way she said it, it certainly seemed compelling that Merlin was the bad guy. We went to confront Merlin and get the pendant, but he told us what was really going on, all the stuff I just told you. We sensed he was right.
“And we realized we had a problem. We couldn’t return home unless we did the quest, as this is always true. And magic was about to stop working, trapping us here for good. But Soliander realized that there would come a moment when the magic had drained from Earth. And at that moment, we might theoretically be free of the quests. Not just that one, but any further ones.”
She noticed Eric’s shrewd eyes on her. “You weren’t doing them voluntarily, were you?”
“No,” she admitted, not at all surprised he knew this. “This isn’t something you can tell anyone except Anna. It was a closely guarded secret. Many worlds looked up to us. We gave them hope. It would not have looked good if anyone knew. We never really had a choice, forced to go on a dangerous quest to solve their problems. I would ask that you maintain this ruse.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “It isn’t really ours to reveal. Please continue.”
Eriana sipped at the beer again. “We were trapped and had no way to get out. But now we had our chance. But it would leave us trapped on Earth, and none of us wanted that. We have friends and families back home. Merlin and Soliander had an idea. They would pool their remaining magic energy to combine their strength, which was fading. They would time Soliander’s return spell to the same moment that magic stopped working and released us. In theory, either it would work and we’d all go home, or it wouldn’t and we would just remain here forever.”
Eric observed, “But neither really happened. You’re here, and Soliander isn’t.”
She sighed, knowing she didn’t have a good explanation for this. “I don’t know what happened. I remember Soliander looked alarmed, right before the spell completed. And moments later I found myself in New Zealand. That was twenty years ago. I have seen no sign of the others since.”
A long silence followed this. Finally, Jack turned to his friends and asked, “Twenty years? I thought you guys said that when you get summoned, everyone thinks you’ve only been gone three years? And Merlin was a thousand years ago. Something isn’t right about all of this.”
That caught Eriana’s attention. “Three years? Are you saying only three years has passed on the worlds you’ve been to, since we went missing?”
“Yes,” said Matt. “They were saying they’ve been trying to summon us for that long. And my impression from Soliander’s memories is that this is how much time has passed. By the way, as you were talking, I could suddenly remember some of your quest here, from his memories in my head.”
Eriana felt confused by much of that but smiled, then laughed. Sudden tears filled her eyes as relief washed over her, an old grief vanishing. The tears flowed down her cheeks. She had lost all hope long ago and resigned herself to an awful possibility that had just gone away.
