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She rocked back on her heels, willing herself to remember that terrifying day. Dzavek in pursuit. The sapphire clutched in her (his) sweat-slick hands. The knowledge that he had to break the trail, except that footprints and handprints in Vnejšek were not so easily hidden. He had to make a true break, to leap from the magical plane into the ordinary world and back, to an entirely different point. Only then could he escape Leos Dzavek.
I remember now. I leaped into nothing. I dared him to follow me. He never could, my brother. He always wanted a sure victory.
It was a gamble she could not refuse, could not resist.
“Follow me,” she said to Rikha, “if you can.”
Without waiting for his reply, she launched herself into a run, each stride lengthening into the next, each leap coming higher, until she took that last measured stride and, calling aloud to the gods, vaulted into the unknown.
Dimension vanished. Darkness. Nothingness. No direction. Falling. Dying. Living.
A brilliant ribbon of light arced before her. Pale footprints dotted that ribbon, each one an impossible distance from the next. All around the wind hurtled past, the sky was an inky void, and she had nothing to guide her but a thin path and her own footsteps.
Step. Leap. Fly. And live.
The ribbon ended, and she tumbled through the centuries onto a desolate plain, where she lay gasping for breath.
Body. I still have my body. I’m alive.
She tried to scramble to her feet, but her knees gave way, and she collapsed into an aching heap. A dark red streak landed next to her. Rikha rolled onto his feet. “The trail continues,” he said. She tried to stand a second time and failed. Rikha merely nudged her with his nose. “Do not bother with walking. Time for you to ride.”
With his assistance, she crawled onto his back and clung to his neck. “Go,” she croaked.
A clear order. And this time Rikha obeyed.
He galloped forward, her weight as nothing to him. The tracks led them to a narrow valley, where the high gray walls shut out the sun. Here the footsteps circled a bare patch of dirt. Valara could see two deep indentations. She dropped off Rikha’s back and dug into the hard ground, not caring how her nails broke or her fingers bled. Rikha pushed her aside and scratched at the packed mound, breaking it apart, while Valara scooped out handfuls. In her hurry, she nearly missed the small dark speck, the size of her thumbnail, which was half-buried in the loose heaps of dirt.
Asha.
Valara carefully extracted the sapphire and cupped it in her hands. Its color was much darker than she had imagined—a blue so deep it looked black, but when she touched it, indigo fire sparked at her fingertips, the lights echoing a complex melody of bright pure notes.
With Asha, I could free my kingdom and hold it safe against the world.
Briefly she saw herself at the head of an army. Her heart leapt up. Just as quickly the image faded and she heard Ilse Zhalina’s voice saying, We must make the right choice this time.
Valara tore off a strip from her shirt and wrapped Asha securely within it. She would not lose this jewel again, even if Dzavek chased her through all Autrevelye. After tucking the bundle inside her shirt, she climbed onto Rikha’s back. “Let us go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IN ALL THE old texts, scholars spoke of the instant of translation, as if magic transported the body into the magical plane in an eyeblink. Like so much else, the phrase was poetical but not accurate. Ilse plainly saw Valara’s body shimmering in the air a long moment before the woman vanished from sight. Even then, whether by some trick of sight or expectation, the ghost of her figure remained, outlined in wreaths of mist and fog.
On impulse, Ilse reached toward the spot where Valara had sat. A wayward puff of air broke the illusion apart. She stopped, exhaled. Suppressed the urge to follow Valara into the void. The other woman was right. Ilse would only prove a burden and distraction. Better that she remain here to safeguard the emerald.
She glanced down at the ring in her hand. Again its weight surprised her and its surface felt unnaturally warm. Daya, Valara called it. A living creature, one who hoped, just as she did. A memory floated up from another life. She had held this jewel, or something like it, in her hands. She had relinquished it to another person. Out of duty? Relief that it would no longer be her responsibility? She couldn’t remember precisely, only an old sense of regret that she had done so.
With some trepidation, she slipped the ring onto her finger.
One more day. Less, if she could believe Valara’s claims. Ilse herself had no such confidence. She would have to start work now to assure her own survival.
She checked her sword and her daggers. Both were in good condition, though she would need to clean her sword and its sheath. There were grasses on the plains, low trees, and patches of snow. She could wipe down the blade, cut switches to clean out the sheath.
First, however, she decided to make a circuit of the Agnau itself. She did not want any surprises. Any more surprises, she reminded herself. The past five months had been filled with nothing but the unexpected.
The Agnau measured several miles in circumference. Its shores remained low and smooth, covered with the same black sand she found at the entrance. Once a few hundred yards beyond the Mantharah’s entrance, however, the cliffs rippled inward then outward, like folds in a cloth, nearly to the edge of the lake, so that she had to edge carefully between them and the seething magical substance of the lake. From time to time, she knelt and sifted through the hot black sands, thinking that she would find more clues to her past, or the world’s, but she found nothing. These were as barren as these cliffs stretching upward to the sky. And yet, a millennium or more ago, life had poured out in a season of love and life.
You and your beloved Toc have loved beyond life and death, Tanja Duhr once wrote. You have loved beyond the imaginable. And so we poor humans cannot imagine and so must stumble through our lives, more blind than Blind Toc, more alive to grief than Lir herself.
