Chapter 6 #2
Must he? Yes, he supposed he must have, at some point.
But he’d seen so many living beings over these last few centuries of his existence.
The past, the present, and all the years in between blended together in a hazy mish-mash of what might be memories or dreams. Whether he slept for hours, days, or years, he could not say.
There was only the valley, the mist, the waiting, and the search.
“I do not remember,” he told her truthfully. “That is, I know that the fae exist, but I do not recall meeting them.” Another mystery for which he had no answers.
He set off again, and she followed him in silence for a few moments. But he could almost hear her mind busily digging away at what he’d told her. Sorting through the threads and dying with the urge to tug at them and see where they led. Unable to do so without losing her last answer.
He nearly cracked a smile, but it wouldn’t do to allow her to know that he’d recognized her dilemma. This game they played was far more fun.
“Well then.” Her frown seemed directed inward, at her own tangled thoughts.
“You are immortal. You are a night elf, of sorts.” She glanced up at him.
“Very likely the ancestor of those we know, given that they are no longer immortal and their shifting is confined to a single shape, and you… Well, you seem less restricted. Perhaps…” She chewed her lip for a moment as they scrambled up a rocky incline.
“Perhaps throughout the generations, your people’s magic has declined.
Perhaps it, too, was caught up in this geas without anyone knowing. ”
Xavi made a mental note not to underestimate her powers of perception. She’d put all that together with startling ease. And accepted both his age and his magic without being overwhelmed by fear or awe. Perhaps he should have gone looking for a scholar bride long ago.
“But then we must account for the fact that there is no evidence of an actual volcano. If one had erupted, there would be signs of volcanic rock—deposits of tuff, pumice, basalt, obsidian, or even the remains of magma flows—and my father found none. And yet, you were there. You have your memories of the mountain’s wrath.
So one wonders where those memories came from.
And how this geas connects to what ought to be a natural phenomenon, rather than a magical one. Unless the mist is also a part of it…”
Her words faded away. She stopped in her tracks, eyes wide, scarcely breathing.
She’d apparently been so deep in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the changes in the air until they had already passed beyond the boundaries of the valley.
Hadn’t noticed the tendrils of mist until they reached out to curl around her feet, drifting through the still mountain air on invisible currents.
She looked back over her shoulder—at their path that was now utterly obscured—then ahead, into a future she could no longer see, or even imagine.
But she did not panic or draw back, even for an instant.
Wonder dawned across her small, expressive face, and she gazed into the mist as if all her dreams had come true.
“We’re here,” she whispered.
Her expression brightened with what Xavi could only call awe. And of course it would. She was standing in a place that had been no more than myth to her until this moment. But now it was real. The story, the mists… even the king. All of it was true, and as he watched, her hands began to tremble.
But not with fear.
“This is actually happening,” she said softly. “After all these years of longing and hoping and working and studying and scrabbling and fighting to see this day… it’s here. They were all wrong. It’s real.”
For a moment, the joy on her face seemed to drive back the gloom of the mist, like a lantern in the depths of the darkest cave.
“You are correct that the mists have some connection to whatever binds us,” Xavi warned, his tone an ominous rumble.
“But like everything else since that day, I have no memory of how they came to be. Only that they have always been here, and that they serve to protect what lies within from all but the most tenacious adventurers. Only a few have reached their boundaries. Fewer still have entered, and those that do often wander aimlessly, either until death claims them or they stumble out again.”
It was a wager on the power of her curiosity. She had to choose this, but if he’d judged her aright, his warning would only make her more determined to enter the valley. If he was wrong…
She whirled to regard him, her head tilted to one side like a sparrow’s.
“I suppose that could easily become my fate—aimless wandering unless I stumble out again. Because if this is indeed a geas or a curse, the one who placed it would not want it easily broken. The source of the enchantment would be hidden and protected from casual sight.”
“Yes,” Xavi agreed. This idea of a geas or a curse was ridiculous, but there was no reason to tell her so.
Not when it compelled her interest so strongly.
“I have observed that there is a sort of repelling power to this place. A nameless fear that infects those who approach or enter. But like the mist, I cannot say when or where it came from. It simply is.”
“But it does not affect you,” she mused. “Nor me, now that I think of it. I am neither repelled nor repulsed. Only anxious to see if all that my father wrote is true. And if it is…”
She turned to face the mist.
“The stones,” she murmured. “There should be two standing stones to mark the valley’s entrance. Twice my height, and dark, with veins of light that shimmer beneath the moon.”
A startling amount of detail for a travel journal. Had her father indeed been so meticulous in his account? Or could it be that there was some other magic at work here?
But Xavi said nothing, only followed in her wake as she continued along their path, forging bravely into those mists as if unaware of the danger. An innocent hare, stepping blindly into the mouth of a wolf.
And yet, did not the wolf need to eat?
How could he view this as anything other than a gift of fate?
Only a few steps further, and the stones loomed up before them—tall, dark pillars on either side of the path. Without fear and without pause, she closed her eyes, reached out, and touched the nearest stone.
Had her eyes not been closed, she would have been as startled as Xavi. A brilliant light shot through the white quartz veins, briefly illuminating the gloom.
That, to his knowledge, had never happened before. But then, how many travelers, having made it this far, had dared to touch the ominous sentries to the hidden valley?
“It’s not cold,” she marveled. “It’s… Well, it’s not warm either, but something else. And it sings! I don’t know if you can hear it. Don’t know if it’s music or magic, but there is life here.”
She looked back over her shoulder, and Xavi was left reeling.
She spoke of life in that slab of rock… There was so much more in her eyes.
Plain gray, and yet not plain at all. They punched him in the gut with hope and leveled him with a wallop of joy—two emotions of which he had no memories and against which he had no defenses.
And she must have read dismay on his face, because hers shuttered and she stepped away from the stone, wrapping her hand in her skirt and stammering apologies.
“That was thoughtless of me,” she blurted out. “It must be so strange—horrifying, really—for me to come here and behave as if your entire life and its tragedies are no more than a story.”
But was that not what they were? Even in his own memory?
He was a character in a tale, playing a predetermined part, much like this human woman.
The only difference between them?
She just didn’t know it yet.