Chapter 10 #2
Everyone looked expectantly at me, which was just great.
Being stared at was my favorite. “Zareth showed me this tree,” I explained.
“There were thousands of leaves on its branches. He said that each leaf represented a realm occupied by countless living beings. Some of the leaves withered and fell as we spoke. He said that those realms were infected by a rot spreading throughout the universe. Whole branches of the tree were blackened and dying. Zareth said that it meant the end. Of everything. Of all realms. That the other gods wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over again, rebuilding the universe from scratch. But he had refused.”
“And so,” Iseabail said, “this male who claimed to be a God said that you and Fisher were the only ones who could prevent the end of everything, then? Is that what you’re telling us?” The witch didn’t sound upset, per se. Her tone was measured, but there was a whirlwind of emotion in her blue eyes.
“No. He said that Fisher and I are an axis of some kind. A convergence in the threads of fate. He told me that none of the gods could see around us. He said that we had to find a way to fix this, otherwise everything was lost. I’m not saying we’re special, Iseabail.
I’m just saying that . . .” I fumbled for the right words.
“A god rolled the dice on an unlikely outcome, just to see if it would pay off. That’s it.
That’s what we are currently working with. ”
No one looked happy to hear this.
I was met with tight, grim expressions as I glanced around the room.
That is, until my gaze fell on Carrion. With his arms draped over the back of the couch and his chin resting on the cushion, he shot me a roguish wink.
“You’ll come up with something, Fane. You always do.
You’re very smart for a twenty-five-year-old. ”
I choked out a laugh, and the tension sucking up all the air in the room suddenly broke. “If you’re going to mock me for my youth, Swift, you might as well get my age right. I’m twenty-four.”
He angled his head, waggling his eyebrows. “Are you, though?”
“I—” Oh. Huh. I trailed off, frowning as I tried to do the math. How long had I been in Yvelia now? It felt like a long, long time, but . . . gods, I had no clue. I’d been here long enough, though. I’d missed my own birthday. I was twenty-five now.
Carrion turned his attention back to his book. “Don’t worry, Fane. We’ll have a big birthday party just as soon as people stop dying all over the place.”
“I don’t want a party.”
“Why not? You always used to come to my birthday parties.”
“I used to go to Kala’s,” I corrected. “You and your drunk friends just so happened to be there too sometimes.”
Lorreth shot Carrion a smirk. “Only Faelings have birthday parties, y’know. We stop celebrating that kind of stuff when we turn fourteen. What are you now, seventeen hundred years old?”
“Watch your tongue, old man. I’m not ancient like the rest of you,” Carrion snorted, turning a page. “I’m only one thousand and ninety-six, thank you very much.”
“Impossible. The Daianthus heir went missing when we were Faelings. I was . . .” Lorreth frowned, searching his memory. “I was thirteen when it happened. I was preparing for my oath. What about you, Fisher?”
Unlike Lorreth, my mate was neither perturbed nor confused by the revelation the warrior had stumbled upon. “Nearly ten,” he said.
“Right. So that means you are nearly our age.” Lorreth raised dark brows at Carrion.
“He isn’t,” Fisher said softly. “It’s as he says. He’s probably only eleven hundred or so.”
Carrion pointed at Fisher. “Thank you. I do know how to count, Lorreth of the Broken Spire.”
“So he’s not the heir, then?” Te Léna sounded just as confused as the rest of us.
“Wait. I’m not?” Carrion was sitting up very straight all of a sudden. “I’m off the hook?”
“He is the heir. I’ve thought about it a lot since the maze, and there’s a plausible explanation for Carrion’s age,” Kingfisher explained. “When my father took him through the quicksilver, something must have happened. My money’s on the gods, interfering again.”
“You think there’s a chance they wanted to speak to him?” I asked. “The way Zareth spoke to me?”
Slowly, my mate nodded. “Time is strange in their realm. When they took me at Ajun, I stood with Bal and Mithin in the middle of a field of swaying tall grass. I saw two figures up on a hill in the distance. The first was Zareth. The second . . . was you, Osha.”
Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. Fisher had fought and nearly died at the Ajun Gate over a thousand years ago. I had been pulled through the quicksilver and into the gods’ realm only a few short weeks ago. “But . . . how? And how do you know it was me?”
I didn’t know your name. I didn’t see your face.
But I knew, Osha. My soul recognized a flicker of itself burning inside someone else and it knew.
The explanation was for me alone. Fisher’s eyes burned with intensity as he conveyed the message.
To the rest of the room, he said, “When my father fled with the Daianthus heir, one or more of the gods must have delayed their escape. At least at their destination, anyway. Time continued here in Yvelia, but in Zilvaren, I believe it stood still.”
It was certainly within their power. And the gods did love to interfere in the matters of the living. I wouldn’t have put it past them. But the question was wh—
“Why?” Carrion asked the question before I’d had the chance to finish thinking it. “To what end? I don’t remember going there. I remember nothing. I don’t even remember your father, Fisher. Did he have some kind of plan for me? Do the gods?”
My mate chewed the inside of his cheek, staring down at his hand where it rested on the table in front of him. It took him a long time to speak. “I barely remember my father, either. And I don’t pretend to know anything of plans made by gods. All we can do is make our own and hope for the best.”
“Agreed.” Until now, Renfis had been notably silent throughout this exchange.
He rubbed his jaw, looking around the room.
“The agendas of the gods will have to be tackled later. For now, nothing is more important than the task at hand. We’re woefully low on silver, but that doesn’t even seem to be an issue anymore.
The horde is at bay. Saeris has forbidden them from leaving the dead fields.
We don’t have to worry about them showing up at the river anymore.
It’s true that we don’t have the relics yet, but we can do without them for now. ”
“Oh, we still need them,” I said.
Everyone looked at me again.
“We need them even more than we did before. The feeders at the river yesterday shouldn’t have been able to disobey my edict, and yet they did.”
“Because they were infected by the rot,” Ren said, slowly. His shoulders slumped, his face falling. “And the rot is spreading. If the horde at Ammontraíeth becomes infected . . .”
“We’re screwed,” Fisher finished. “Fuck.” He frowned, his eyes a million miles away as he processed that.
“The relics still won’t help us if we need to face an infected army,” Lorreth muttered.
I kept my mouth shut this time. I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.
As usual, Fisher took on the burden of the difficult task, bearing the weight of it for the rest of us.
“If it comes to that, nothing will help us,” he said.
“We’ll have to leave Yvelia. And for a mass evacuation on that level, we’ll need far more than fifteen thousand relics. ”
There were other realms. Places where we might be able to outrun the decay for a while. But it would be a temporary fix. From what Zareth had said, the rot that was fast spreading toward the mountain range separating Irrín from Cahlish was already finding ways to hop from one realm to another.
Renfis inclined his head, nodding. “Okay. I stand corrected. We will need more silver. More than we could hope to access here in Yvelia.”
“Agreed.” Fisher pressed his fingertips into his temples. After thinking for a moment, he looked up at me. “There’s a forge at Ammontraíeth. There has to be.”
“I’ll find it. And as soon as I do, I’ll get to work.”
“Thank you. While you’re there, Carrion can hunt for information about sealing your runes. And mastering your abilities in general, for that matter.”
Carrion let out a pained sigh and heaved himself up from the sofa. He slapped his hands at his clothes, straightening himself out. “No,” he said. “Carrion cannot.”
“Why? Got something better to do?” Fisher asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say better, but . . .” He rolled his eyes. “I know where you’re heading, and unfortunately for the both of us, I’m better off accompanying you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Where can we easily lay our hands on a bunch of silver outside of this realm?” the smuggler asked.
Oh.
Oh, no.
I flinched when I realized where this was going.
“We also need to figure out if the infected feeders are coming from Zilvaren. And I’m just guessing here, but I’m sure that now that you’re mated and all starry eyed, you’re going to want to go and fetch Saeris’s brother and finally honor the deal you made with her—”
“Careful, Swift,” Fisher grumbled.
“And who knows exactly what the notorious Hayden Fane looks like, hmm?”
“You’ve made your point.”
“If that task’s left up to you again, you’ll probably bring back some random . . . hey, what was that guy called?” Carrion snapped his fingers at me, frowning. “Y’know, that blond guy who kissed you at Kala’s that time? You chipped his front tooth when you punched him in the mouth.”
I was going to punch him in the mouth very soon. “Carrion, stop.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “All right. All right. I’m just saying. While you keep shit in check with the Blood Court and figure out some new magic tricks, Fisher and I will head back to the Silver City and take care of business there, too. It only makes sense.”
A thick silence filled the library as everyone processed this.
I waited for Fisher to refuse the suggestion, but when I saw his dark scowl, I realized that he wasn’t going to shoot down Carrion’s plan after all.
He looked like he wanted to murder him. Instead, he said, “Fine. But I swear to the gods, if you talk the entire time, I will kill you and leave your carcass for the crows, Carrion Swift.”