Chapter 40 New Heights
NEW HEIGHTS
CEDRIC
Cedric never liked the Chasm bridge.
It wasn’t the height, necessarily, although all five celestials knew he wasn’t a fan of that.
The bridge spanned a gorge deep enough to swallow entire caravans, with a drop that disappeared into mist. And it wasn’t the narrowness, either, though he had little love for the slim passage of stone—no lip, no wall on either side. Just a clean edge and a swift drop.
No, it was the knowing. The memory.
With every clop of Polonius’ hooves against the stone, he remembered crossing it for the first time, his fingers white-knuckled on the wagon bench as Lord Church had offered platitudes and Thibault and Hargrave had both snickered at his clear fear.
He remembered his own barbaric attitude, the hate he’d held onto as they’d made their way to Luminaria.
The determination he’d had to show the Arcanians up, to win the crown for realm and glory.
For humanity.
Had he ever even had that right?
Cedric dropped Polonius’ reins for a moment to wipe his sweaty palms against his pants.
“You look nervous, Sir Worrywart.”
Cedric let out a breathy laugh, tracking Thraigg, Ollie, Jocelyn, and Young Shep as they trotted across, several horse-lengths ahead. Sid, in typical fashion, was nowhere to be found, though Cedric had no doubt she lurked in the shadows nearby.
“All the things you’ve called me in this lifetime, and that’s the one that sticks? Truly?”
Elyria grinned. “Worry less, and I’ll find something else to call you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“What has you all tied up in knots now? The trip has been easy thus far—no attacks, no dramatics.”
“Yes, but do you think it’s been too easy?”
“I think we filled our quota for excitement in Dawnspire. We are owed a bit of ease,” she said, encouraging Fjaethe forward with a nudge of her heel. Turning her head, she called over her shoulder, “If you’re worried about trodding over this bridge, Sir Victor, I could always fly you across.”
He knew she was joking.
She was probably joking.
But he urged Polonius forward anyway, swallowing the knot in his throat and keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, on the periwinkle-haired beacon in front of him. “This is fine,” he said shakily, and Elyria laughed.
“Suit yourself.”
Turned out, they really were in for an easy journey to the Midlands. No interruptions. Few interactions with other travelers. Even the weather had been stars-damned perfect—balmy and breezy, with clouds rolling across the brilliant blue sky.
Cedric was glad for the chance to enjoy the experience of traveling with Elyria—with his friends. He’d overthought his way into misery on the way to Dawnspire, mulling over that last night with Elyria, over her reaction to Raefe. Over his own. Over keeping his power under wraps and in check.
Now, he felt . . . lighter. He didn’t have to hide from any of the people here. Didn’t have to make excuses or pull himself back. He was free to be whoever—whatever—he was now, and it felt good. Natural. Like, breathing.
Together, the group passed by several small human encampments, newly built since the accords. Campfires dotted the hills. Folks hung bright banners on camps and small, quickly constructed wooden cottages, set behind makeshift fences. Children played by wagons as horses grazed.
It was true, people had indeed started moving into the Midlands, moving beyond the boundaries of Havensreach at the first possibility.
Even if he didn’t know what the overcrowded streets of Kingshelm were like, even if he hadn’t regularly witnessed the dilapidated state of the Walk firsthand, Cedric would have understood why.
There was a raw sort of grandeur to these lands.
A gentle wind that swept through long grass—greener and freer than that which grew on the other side of the Chasm.
If it was the mana that ran freely through the lands or the two centuries of it being uninhabited—perhaps a combination of both—that gave it such wild beauty, Cedric didn’t know.
He only knew he hoped that it would last forever.
It couldn’t have lasted forever.
By nightfall, the weather had turned. Their serene, sunlit journey came to a wet and windy end, just as the group reached the edge of the Elderglade forest.
The storm came from the east, black clouds roiling like a beast overhead. Thunder cracked. Rain lashed sideways. And the narrow path through the woods—impossibly tall evergreen trees twisting into the sky, looming on either side—had already begun to flood.
And then there was the mist. It rolled in shortly after they entered the forest. It didn’t drift, didn’t swirl around ankles, a loose smoke covering the ground that the rain should have easily washed away.
No, it pulsed.
It breathed.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a warning.
“Oi! What’s the plan here, boyo?” Thraigg called from ahead. “Do we press on? Or do ye wanna make camp, wait out the storm?”
“Camping in this?” Jocelyn shouted from her position just a few feet behind the dwarf. “We’d drown in our bedrolls.”
“I say we go for the third option,” Elyria said.
“What third opt—” Cedric cut himself off as Elyria pointed ahead to a crossing in the path.
Not just where the path itself diverged, though it did, splitting off in two separate directions.
But where two silver-trunked trees were planted right at the point of divergence, perhaps ten feet apart, looking like they had grown toward each other.
Covered in vines that seemed to glow through the rain, their trunks were bowed, their branches twisting, intertwining, reaching.
Welcoming.
For a reason he could not possibly have begun to understand, Cedric found the inner corners of his eyes prickling.
Damn rain in my eyes, he thought, and a zip of amusement lanced through his chest. He looked over at Elyria, perched upon Fjaethe, her periwinkle strands plastered to her face, dripping down the end of her braid. She was grinning at him, and Cedric furiously blinked the water—the rain—away.
“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Ollie muttered as he slowed his horse before the embracing trees. The overall effect they gave was something like a gate—an archway of silver branches and more of that low, pulsing mist.
“It’s . . . beautiful.” Jocelyn drew her horse close enough to brush her fingers across the luminous vines that curled up each trunk.
Thraigg grunted. “Beautiful and fuckin’ deadly. I can feel the magic here crawling in my teeth.”
With the rain still pummeling them, his hair sticking to his forehead and his vision blurred, Cedric couldn’t be sure, but—“Does it look to anyone else like it isn’t raining on the other side of that?”
Elyria and Fjaethe drew up beside him. “You’re not imagining it, Sir Observant.”
“I guess I’m not imagining that this feels awfully familiar either, then.”
“Another fucking gate,” she said with a grin, and even with the rain drenching them both, gooseflesh pimpling his skin beneath his soaked clothing, Cedric felt warm inside.
Young Shep guided his horse into place next to Jocelyn, all six of their horses lined up in pairs before the strange archway. “This is the entrance to Elderglade,” he said, his voice almost too soft for Cedric to hear. The words sounded heavy as he spoke them—reverent.
“Well, what’re we waitin’ for then?” said Thraigg, and with a cluck of his tongue, and a tap of his palm to the hammer slung on his back, the dwarf urged his horse forward.
Young Shep and Jocelyn followed suit, their horses already ahead of the dwarf’s, and walked through the archway. Cedric felt the forest shudder, a pulse of ancient magic spreading through the trees . . . And both the sylvan and the fae were gone.
Thraigg muttered something that sounded like half a curse and half a blessing as he followed them through—and promptly disappeared as well.
“Please, please, please, let it be dry on the other side,” said Ollie, before offering a joking salute back to Cedric and Elyria and vanishing through the archway.
Elyria moved forward, and Fjaethe nickered nervously. “My turn, I suppose,” she said. “Think Sid will know where to find us?”
Cedric smiled. “Oh, of that I have no doubt.”
“All right, see you in there, then,” she said.
Once again, Cedric felt it—that pulse of magic, that shuddering force all around him. But it wasn’t a welcome this time.
The space between the bent trees of the archway glowed bright, white, blinding. The forest recoiled.
And Elyria was hit with a burst of magic flaring from the archway that blasted her clear off Fjaethe’s back.
She hit the earth hard, skidding backward until she collided with the sturdy trunk of another tree, shadows spasming off her body.
“Elle!” Cedric had never dismounted so fast. He dashed to her side, panic seizing his lungs, making each rain-soaked breath agony. “Are you all right?”
“What the ever-living, stars-damned, motherfucking fuck?”
She was all right.
“I’m fine,” she growled, pushing herself upright, drawing her shadows in around her until they settled over her skin like a layer of clothing.
Faintly, Cedric thought he could hear muffled voices from beyond the archway. He couldn’t be sure though, because the luminous vines that were rapidly unwinding themselves from around the silver trunks there had his full attention. They stretched across the opening, weaving over it—closing it.
“Go, Cedric,” Elyria urged, pushing him toward the gate. “I’ll find another way through. Or you’ll find me out here when you’re done, pissed but waiting.”
He laughed. “We’ve been through this before, Trouble. Not fucking happening. Remember?”
She sighed, but he didn’t miss the way her shoulders dropped, just a fraction. Didn’t miss the pulse of relief he felt in his own chest.
“This feels oddly familiar too,” Cedric mused, wiping water from his brow as the final vines knitted together.
“Unfortunately, I agree with you,” Elyria said, eyes narrowing on the now-sealed archway. “But this time, we don’t have a whole crew to pull magic from in order to figure it out. Looks like it’s just you and me.”
Cedric smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”