“For the love of the Mother, hold still,” I shouted, planting my heel in a crack well suited to a cliff swallow’s roost. “I’ve no place to set you down. And you don’t want to see where we’ll land if you throw me off balance.”
If she spoke I didn’t hear her, but she did settle. The roar of the sea grew louder, the scent of salt wrack affirming the evidence of my ears. At a slight leveling of the track, I risked another glance. A star-filled sky illumined the white curls of breaking waves.
Ardra touched the western sea just north of the tin mines and cliffside sea fortresses of Cymra. But to reach the shore one must cross the wilds of the Aponavi, painted clansmen who herded goats and crafted rugs and collected heads for sport. To consider how far we might have traveled stretched my tired mind beyond reason.
Below me, Kol’s fiery sigils vanished, and I hurried onto the next downward pitch. My left boot slid sidewise toward the void…Concentrate, fool! But my right boot had no purchase on the skittering rocks, and I dared not trust it with our combined weight. Three quick steps at once brought me to another course reversal and an even steeper pitch. I dared not pause the entire last quarter of the descent, so that when I hurtled onto a shore of rippled sand I had difficulty persuading my feet to stop before they quickstepped right into the sea.
“Great Deunor’s grandmother!” I said, dropping to my aching knees…my blessed, aching, unsplintered knees. A rush of gratitude led me to deposit Saverian onto the sand with far more care than my screaming shoulders would prefer. Then I sat back on my heels, gulping air. She sat up, pulled her half-unraveled braid out of her face, and gaped.
“You’ve infected me with your madness.” Narrowing her eyes to slits, she rubbed her temples vigorously. “Else I’ve bumped my head, and all this”—she waved at the sea and sky and sand without looking at them—“is but my own mind’s imagining. If you tell me it’s neither, and that I’ve not just dreamed performing the single most appallingly stupid act of my life, I beg you snap my neck quickly.”
“You saved my life, lady—you and he.” I nodded a hundred quercae down the shore where Kol sat on a cluster of boulders, long arms wrapped around his bent knees, allowing the sea spray to shower him. “I could not leave you to reap Osriel’s whirlwind for your kindness. But truth be told, I don’t know as I’ve done you any favor. I’ve no idea where he’s brought us…”…assuming Kol had brought us here at all. Just because I had managed to follow him didn’t mean he wished us to be here.
She bent her head to her knees and beat her fists on her skull. Mumbled invective flowed from her like lava from a volcano. Her inventive mixture of human anatomy and unlikely violence altogether lifted my spirits.
The chill, damp wind flapped my cloak. Driftwood lay about the shore, tempting me to direct the prickly mage’s attention to fire. But the luminous breakers, the wind-borne scent of unknown shores, and a heaven filled with brilliant stars of such profusion and arrangement as I had never witnessed reminded me that we were not in our own land, but lost in Aeginea.
I pushed up to my feet. “I must speak to him before anything. Find out where he’s brought us and what he wants of me. You’ll be all right for a bit?”
“On the day I require the protection of a lunatic, I’ll snap my own neck. Yes, please go find out where we are, so I’ll know whether I’ve a better choice to travel east to Estigure or west to Cymra to find a new employer.” Her gaze, sparked with starlight, traveled up and down my height. “You’re going to tell me we’re in the realm of angels, aren’t you? And that the naked man with the exceedingly odd skin that I’ve imagined seeing is some kin of yours?”
I grinned down at her. “My uncle. Though he’s as loath as my every other kinsman to claim me. I’ll be back as soon as I may, and I’d advise not burning anything right away.”
I tramped the short distance down the broad tidal flats, finding it easier going than slogging through the dunes. Kol took no notice of my coming. Mustering every shred of graceful manners my tutors had beaten into me, I bowed and spoke the greeting Osriel had used. The Dané might not delight my eye, but my gratitude could not be measured. “Envisia seru, Kol. How may I serve thee in recompense for sound legs?”
“Be unborn.” He continued to stare into the churning sea.
The rebellious ember that yet denied the story of my birth winked out of existence. Seeking shelter from the wind and spray, I squeezed between his waist-high perch and another slab, pressed my weary back to the damp stone, and sat.
“If wishing could accomplish such a thing, gods know it would have happened long before now,” I said, twisting my aching shoulders. “My father’s family wished it. Many’s the time I’ve wished it—but that was before I learned that I had a kinswoman who could be spoken of as ‘beloved of every Dané for her joyful spirit.’”
“Do not think to ingratiate thyself by speaking of her.”
“I’ve no wish to ingratiate myself with any of your kind,” I snapped, his arrogance a cold wash on my conciliatory sensibilities. “You have extended me favors I never asked of you and that are clearly at odds with your own inclinations. Thus I must assume it is your sister’s desires you serve and that she wished us to treat each other with honor, if naught else. I offer no less than she would ask—and no more.”
After a long moment, he jerked his head in agreement. “I retract my unworthy accusation.”
Resisting the temptation to gasp in mock astonishment, I gestured at the desolate shore. “So, why would my mother want me here?”
“She chose me as thy vayar—thy teacher. The shores of Evaldamon provide a suitable place for teaching and are little traveled. Days pass slowly here. Yet were the days each the lingering of a season, the task is already impossible. I smell the remasti close upon thee. Once a body has passed the last remasti unchanged, naught can be done to alter it.”
“The last remasti…my birthday.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his jaw. “Clyste trusted the Cartamandua to bring thee to me in the proper season—long ago. Despite what human lies tell, the long-lived do not steal human children away to Aeginea. Clyste’s innocence burned as the stars; the Cartamandua’s false promises stank as human dwellings do.”
“So it was for one broken promise that you stole Janus’s mind—stole his life.” Kol’s arrogance revolted me. “You mourn for my mother who broke your laws and sent me off with him. Yet for a failed human man, you alone issue a judgment that breaks all bounds of compassion. I’ve no desire for your lessons.”
“Which is precisely why the teaching would be useless.”
The Dané unfolded his legs, pressed the bottoms of his feet together, and drew his heels close to his groin. I squirmed as I watched, imagining the uncomfortable stretch. Clasping his hands together, he straightened his arms over his head, then slowly bent his body forward until his chest came near touching the surface of the flat rock. I hugged my knees tightly, as if someone might prod me to replicate his move.
The silence lagged. Already I rued my hasty retort. My life demanded answers. I needed to understand what I was and what I would be, come the winter solstice.
“You brought me here despite your belief that I could not learn what you would teach,” I said. “She had some plan, didn’t she…my mother? She mated with Janus because she—”
“I will not speak of that joining.” He sprang to his feet, his sigils pulsing, posture and voice articulating bald humiliation. “It is enough that my sister’s blood flows in thy veins. She believed the Everlasting had accounted a place for thee in the Canon. This I cannot and will not accept. And if ever such a disordered event were possible, the season of its accomplishment has long passed. Yet even so late in this waning season I know what she would ask of me.”