“But tell her that we would be grateful for a bed,” Fallion said.
I’ll bet you’d be grateful, Rhianna thought-especially if she was in it.
Rhianna could not help but be jealous. She had fought beside Fallion, stood beside him for years. She had openly declared her love for Fallion only two days ago, and he had said that he loved her too. But she could see how attracted he was to this stranger.
Why doesn’t he look at me like that? she wondered.
Fallion earned a smile from Siyaddah with the news, and moments later Fallion, Jaz, Talon, and Rhianna were following Siyaddah’s shapely form through the tunnels, until at last she stopped at a door beneath some thumb- lanterns. Words were painted in yellow beneath the lights, and Rhianna tried to remember their shapes as they entered a plush apartment.
The room was decorated in a style that somehow felt familiar to Rhianna. The walls were draped in rich, colored silks in palest blue, as if to mimic a tent. The floor was carpeted in lamb hides, their thick hair as inviting as a bed. And all around the sitting room, pillows lay for the guests to recline on. It was much like the great tents that the horse-sisters of Fleeds lived in.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Siyaddah said. She nodded, and a servant went through the room, blowing out most of the lights so that they could sleep. Rhianna went and lay down upon a huge pillow, and just rested there, thinking.
Talon apologized to Siyaddah and told Fallion, “I lived in this city until three days ago,” Talon said, “or at least my shadow self did. My father disappeared in the melding. You and I both know where he went. His two halves joined, and now he is across the Carroll Sea, on the far side of the world. But I have a mother here-not Myrrima, but the woman my father married on this world, Gatunyea. I need to go see her, to let her know that I am well, and to explain where I think father is. Will you excuse me?”
Rhianna did not envy her that sticky task.
“Go,” Fallion said, “and may luck follow on your heel.”
Talon asked permission of Rhianna and Jaz, too, for she would be leaving them without a translator.
“Would you like me to come with you,” Rhianna asked, “for moral support?”
Talon thought for a moment. “No. I think…I think that I should tell her alone. I don’t know how she will take it.”
“All right,” Rhianna said. She got up and hugged Talon, then sent her out the door.
Without a translator, Siyaddah could not speak to them, but she did her best to be a good hostess. She showed them the water closet, an affair much nicer than any that Rhianna had ever seen. In it, a waterway was cut in stone and then covered, so that any waste would just wash away.
After showing them this room, Siyaddah waved at them, urging them to find a cushion to sleep on.
They each found a pillow, and Siyaddah showed them that they could pull a lambskin over them if they got cold.
Rhianna lay down, and wondered how long Talon would be gone.
All night, she thought. Her mother here in Luciare would be sick with grief, Rhianna imagined, and she would need Talon to comfort her.
Rhianna wondered about her own mother. Common sense said that her mother was dead. On her own world, Rhianna’s father had killed her. Rhianna had been blindfolded at the time, and had not seen it. But she’d heard the blow land, a blow to the head that hit with a loud crack, and she’d heard her mother’s body fall.
But what about on this world? Rhianna wondered. Fallion and Jaz had a father here, or at least his shadow- half. Could I have my mother’s shadow self here?
She suddenly found herself growing misty-eyed at the prospect, and she fought back a sniffle. It was too much to hope for, but she dared imagine that she had a mother here.
Would I even know her if I saw her? Rhianna wondered.
Rhianna tried to recall her mother’s face. Sometimes she still saw it in dreams, but the memory had faded: red hair tied in a single braid, hanging down her back, an oval face generously dotted with freckles, fierce hazel eyes that were almost green, a small nose just a tad too thin.
Her body had always been well toned and muscled, and she had walked with the deadly gait of a trained fighter.
There was so much fight in that woman, Rhianna thought, I cannot believe that she was bested in battle.
But she remembered the sound of her mother’s skull cracking open, and a knot in Rhianna’s belly tightened.
At that moment, there was a call at the door, and Daylan Hammer entered.
He spoke softly to their hostess for a moment, and then turned to Rhianna.
His smile was broad, but sad.
“My little one,” he said as he came to sit beside her. He took her hand, leaned his shoulder against her, but he sat facing Fallion.
“It has been many years,” he said softly to Fallion, “many years since you last appeared. Do you remember anything of your past life, of why you have spent so many centuries hiding, healing?”
Fallion shook his head.
“You should,” Daylan told him. “Your spirit has mended sufficiently. It, like your body, needs time to rest and heal when it is injured. I think it is healed, but now it is time for it to awaken.”
Daylan unclasped Rhianna’s hand, reached out to Fallion, and touched him with one finger, on the sternum. He said nothing that the human ear might hear, but Daylan was an expert at speaking as lords did on the netherworld, from spirit to spirit. Rhianna distinctly heard the word within her mind, “Waken, Light-bringer. The world has need of you and the hour is late.”
Fallion’s eyes widened just a little in surprise, then Daylan spoke in words for all to hear.
“Once there was One True World, where mankind thrived, beneath the shelter of a great tree. We lived in peace, and there was great prosperity, for men did not seek their own gain, but sought to enrich each other as much as themselves. The True Tree spread above us, hiding us from the eyes of our enemies, and whispering words of peace.
“We had enemies, but we also had each other. There were Darkling Glories that hunted us, creatures of great power that carried darkness with them wherever they went. And there were heroes among us who hunted the Darkling Glories in return, men called the Ael.
“You were one of the Ael,” Daylan told Fallion. “You were a champion who swore to serve his people, and for this the people gave you their support.
“So you were gifted with runes of power, much like the runelords on the world where you were born. But in those days, the taking and giving of endowments was not such a horrid thing. Dedicates did not die in the exchange. People chose their champions wisely, offering up endowments only to the most deserving, and as one of the Ael you would only draw upon those runes in moments of great extremity.
“To give an endowment, the best part of yourself, was not a sacrifice; it was an act of pure love.”
Rhianna had heard these stories before. She had learned them on Daylan’s knee as a child, in her brief stay in the netherworld. Now, she realized, Daylan was telling them to Fallion in an effort to waken the memories.
“Let me tell you how it will be,” Daylan said. “Tonight, Fallion, when next you sleep, you will recall your time beneath the great tree. You will remember the great hurt you suffered, and your valiant struggle to fight the Queen of the Loci. And when you wake, you will know what you must do…”
Daylan was not a large man. He did not tower over the group, and Rhianna imagined that if you spotted him in a market, you would not have thought him special. He did not look wiser than other men, or stronger.
But at this moment, she looked into his eyes and it seemed that he grew old. There was great sadness there, and infinite wisdom. He looked scarred and aged, like the majestic sandstone mountains in Landesfallen that have been battered and sculpted by the wind over the ages until their sides have worn away, creating faces as smooth as bone, revealing the inner majesty of the mountain.
For a moment, Daylan did not look like a man, but a force of nature.
Fallion smiled weakly and looked down at his hands, as if unsure whether to believe Daylan.
“Fallion,” Daylan said. “Have you ever tried clutching your cape pin when you go to sleep?”
Rhianna smiled. As Fallion had discovered when he first touched it, if you held the pin long enough, it would
