Chapter 7
Perhaps she should have been afraid. Probably would have been, had she not encountered this moment a thousand times in her dreams.
Walking along a mountain path, only to be surrounded by mist. Cut off from the world beyond. There was only the path, and then a few steps further on, the stones. Tall and dark, and yet somehow not threatening.
And now, here they were. Just as her father drew in his journal. Just as she’d seen—and touched—each time she passed this way.
So it was not fear that she felt. Nor was it doubt, oddly enough. Perhaps she ought to have dismissed this night elf as a liar and a fraud, their meeting as far too serendipitous, and his story as a fabrication meant to entrap her.
But it simply wasn’t possible. Not with the evidence of her dreams and her father’s journal. Not with the standing stones looming out of the mist, as solid and familiar as the walls of the university itself.
No, this occasion ought to have been joyful—the culmination of so many years of working, planning, hoping, enduring rejection, and refusing to give up—and yet, everything she felt was tinged with melancholy.
Because to Xaviel, this was not just a dream or a story.
Until this moment, Ryn had never stopped to consider what stories must be like for those who lived them, but now, she was nearly overwhelmed by the weight of it.
What had once been mere words had become living, breathing reality—but it was a reality where wounds bled and hearts ached, and no one could look ahead to the happy ending only a few pages away.
“I’m sorry, Xaviel.” She looked up at the tall, beautiful creature who probably ought to have terrified her, and found him watching her with parted lips and haunting shadows in his already mesmerizing eyes.
“Sorry for your losses, sorry for all these miserable centuries of waiting. Of being alone. Sorry for sounding so happy when this all holds so many terrible memories for you. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.
” His people, his freedom, and his future had all been stripped away in one devastating blow, and now he was little more than a ghost—neither alive nor dead.
Nothing more than a story to any other living being.
“It might even have been you who placed these stones, as a memorial to all that you lost.”
But a quick burst of laughter ripped from his throat. “Don’t waste your sympathies on me, human. I neither need nor care for them. And I do not know who placed these stones. Like the mist, they’ve been here for as long as I can remember.”
A part of the geas, then?
“I don’t know how you’ve survived alone for all these centuries. Searching endlessly. Waiting for someone you’ve begun to believe might never come.”
He did not speak for a moment, and Ryn had the distinct impression that there was something he did not want her to know. That she might be forced to use her third question to press him for answers.
And also that he might shift back into a gryphon and eat her if she kept pestering him about feelings.
She needed to continue on. There was no point to this journey if she did not enter the valley, find the sleeping king, and confront her dreams once and for all. But she did not know how to ask without seeming…
“Are you ready?” Xaviel’s impatient tone shook her from her thoughts.
“Yes?”
“Then we should keep moving. The boundary deters most monsters, so I prefer not to rest until we are in the valley itself.”
And with that, the tall, not-exactly-a-night-elf strode off, passed between the stones, and disappeared into the mist.
Relief swamped her, at least until she recalled Xaviel’s words about wandering aimlessly in the mist until death was all that remained.
But the thought did not truly frighten her.
Or rather, it did not frighten her as much as the thought of returning home without finishing whatever it was she’d come here to do.
So she didn’t stop to question her motives—or his—as she forged boldly into the mist after him.
Just let her feet carry her forward along the barely visible track that plunged downward once she passed the stones.
She could neither hear nor see her guide, but she moved ahead anyway because where else was there to go?
Back into the trackless wilderness with no guide, no protection, no supplies?
Back to a world where she—and her scholarship—were considered little more than an annoyance?
So she followed the trail, one step after another as it continued on, every detail of her surroundings obscured but for the ground beneath her feet. No sounds penetrated the enshrouding fog except for the thud of her footsteps.
When the feeling of isolation grew to be too much, Ryn stopped and focused on her other senses.
Perhaps there was nothing to hear or see, but she could still bend down and touch the packed ground.
Feel the rough texture of the stones and scrub grass that bordered the path.
The worn leather of her boots. The heavy wool of her skirts.
And if she closed her eyes, she could smell the damp odor of the fog, the crisp chill of mountain air, and the scent of the ravenleaf trees—reminiscent of pitch and pine, but also of must and rain on dry stone.
When it seemed she had been walking for hours, she paused to drink from her water bag, reminded herself firmly that one could not actually starve to death in a single day, and then continued on.
Had Xaviel left her? Or was this a test that she must pass? Had her father, too, wandered on, lost and alone, wondering whether this path would ever end?
Sturdy boots, her father always said, were the most important thing, and perhaps this was another reason why. So you could keep walking. Keep moving forward. No matter how dark it was, no matter whether you knew where the path ended…
And then, it did.
It happened without warning, and she almost didn’t understand for a moment because on the other side of the mist it was twilight. The sun was dying, and the moon was rising, and the world was still and strange and gray.
But suddenly she could see that she indeed stood on the edge of a valley.
Surrounded on all sides by towering peaks, the shape was that of a bowl, with three rocky promontories intruding boldly along its curved edges.
The floor of the valley was intermittently hidden by groves of trees—some ravenleaf, some emberwood—and she could catch glimpses of the mirror-like surface of a lake somewhere near the center.
It was lovely. Peaceful. And it appeared she had reached it alone…
“What took you so long?”
Ryn let out a screech worthy of a scalded cat and leaped backward.
Xaviel had somehow materialized at her side, and in the strange twilight of the valley, his eyes seemed redder than ever. His teeth flashed briefly in an expression she could not read, and it occurred to her once more to wonder whether at least some of those teeth might be pointed.
“I followed the path,” she said, disguising her annoyance behind a bland expression. “I suspect the geas may have been testing me. Hoping I would give up and turn around.”
“And now it is too late.”
There was something not quite right about his tone. He pronounced those words with flat finality, as if he were pronouncing a death, an ending, or a point of no return.
But that could not be true. Her father had come here. He’d seen this place and returned.
So she was going to do the same.
But only if she found a solution to her next most pressing concern.
Her stomach very obligingly chose that moment to growl like a tiny, incompetent predator.
“Perhaps,” she murmured in embarrassment, “we could discuss this further over food.”
“We could,” Xaviel returned, his mood shifting once again into bland agreeableness. “What are we having?”
Ryn’s jaw dropped in disappointment. She’d hoped that someone who’d lived in this place for centuries would at least have solved the problem of food supplies, but perhaps the geas meant he didn’t need to eat?
Thankfully, she was not entirely without resources.
“There must be a source of fresh water in this valley,” she mused, as if to herself, and her tall, white-haired companion agreed.
“Yes, indeed there must.”
“Even if you don’t need to eat, you could not have survived so long without safe drinking water.”
“Don’t need to eat?” Xaviel gave a wicked-sounding laugh. “Oh, I assure you, I enjoy eating very much. In all my forms.”
He offered no further information or encouragement, and Ryn mumbled a heartfelt curse.
He’d figured it out. He knew she couldn’t ask direct questions, so now he was going to make her work for every scrap of knowledge.
Fortunately, she had a lot of experience in that area.
“Fine,” she muttered, shoving her right hand into one of her skirt’s voluminous pockets.
It was quite startling, really, how many items one could carry and conceal within the folds of a good traveling skirt.
Her notebook, a spoon, a handful of coins, several pencils, string, a small knife, a sewing kit, a flint, a tangle of hair ties, a pocket mirror, and…
aha. Two of her father’s other essential items for travelers—a length of oiled-silk fishing line and a tiny pouch of hooks.
Twilight was, after all, one of the best times for fishing.
“If you would be so kind as to show me to the most appropriate water source, I will do my best to catch my own dinner,” she announced, her chin lifting as if to prove that she was not at all daunted by such a prospect.