Chapter Six
Chapter
six
I had forgotten the diaphanous delirium of traveling by portal.
How it turns flesh and bone to dust and particle, how it reduces all that is solid into a disorienting state of nonexistence.
All is light, all is aether, all is aglow.
And I…I am nothing. An entity entirely distinct from my body.
A wraith, moving at warp speed across the land.
The vast network of leylines is almost impossible to behold.
It spreads across Anwyvn—through it, rather, like veins through a body.
Gossamer as the web of a spider in sunlight, they branch off in all directions.
Pathways of light, splitting and spiraling southward, beyond the borders of Dyved, beyond the range, beyond even the Midland kingdoms that lay on the other side.
The first time—the only time—I traveled thus before, it was at Penn’s side. His hand holding mine, his soul a stalwart guide. No chance of getting lost, not with him. Still, he had warned me how important it is to know one’s destination. To focus on it for the duration of your journey.
Only attempt to travel between portals when you know their precise locations.
I do try. Try to hold Caeldera in my mind, to envision the warded chamber atop the crater’s rim where I intend to make my exit. Try to keep from getting distracted by the disorientation that grips me as I hurl through beams of purest light, a blinding symphony of white noise and leached color.
But I falter. For a split second, I allow my mind to muddle, my thoughts homed not on my task but, instead, caught up in the conversation I left behind at Blister Bight. In the man I left behind.
One fractured instant of inattention.
Still, it is enough to doom me.
My focus slips and, once it does, there is no regaining it.
I lose my foothold on the path that guides me back to Caeldera and, faster than I would have thought possible, find myself completely unmoored.
Flying through the aether without any true course, confronted with an infinity of unknown exits.
None of which feels the least bit familiar.
Gods, what have I done?
Panic presses in, stealing even more of my concentration, making it all the more difficult to locate my intended target.
Penn was right. This is reckless. I stare in increasing horror at the endless expanse of possible exit points, attempting to glean meaning like an astrologer picking out constellations in the vast blanket of stars.
A handful terminate in bright orbs of light—the sign of a functional portal.
Yet others appear sick. They flicker periodically, a weak throb of illumination that seems to dim with each passing moment.
Many are entirely dark. Black and decaying, like the flesh of a gangrenous wound that requires amputation.
Dead ends.
These, I rush past without preamble, knowing they are not viable.
Even if they are, I have a feeling they will not deposit me anywhere I want to be.
For it would not serve me well to step out of a portal onto a Midlands battlefield where halflings are hunted on sight.
Or worse, into the coarse sands of the Southlands where, by all accounts, my fate would be far more barbaric. And far more swift.
My dissembled form is ferried like mist along a leyline that leads eastward, toward the heart of Dyved. So I think. I have very little concept of direction, very little cognizance at all.
How long have I been here?
Seconds, minutes, hours?
How far have I journeyed?
I feel I have been traveling for a single heartbeat and yet, also, an eternity. It is not merely time I am losing but ground. The earth slips by in a rush, leading me farther and farther from where I started.
I cast out my straining senses, trying to find some differentiation among the many options laid out before me. Trying to distinguish some small nuance in the near-identical field of light orbs that dance on my periphery. I pass more and more dead portals, their rotten pathways a foreboding sight.
Would I, too, turn black and lifeless, lost here in an eternal loop? Unable to choose where to exit? Incapable of finding my way out?
Desperation mounts with each passing moment. If I could breathe, if I had lungs, I would be breathless, panting for air. If I had eyes from which to cry, I would weep. But my body is gone, no more than a memory. Reality is slipping away.
I am slipping away.
I cannot recall what I am doing here. I barely recall my own name. My very soul feels as though it is fraying at the seams as my frail mind struggles to contain the immensity of time’s great fabric, the scope of a whole realm compressed into a single pane.
I have to get out of here.
Even if I end up in Carvage, my fate will be better than this slow atrophy into aether. I am prepared to choose at random, if only to escape the terrifying fray of my own consciousness. But then, finally, just as I have begun to lose all hope…
I feel it.
A pulse in the distance. Faint. Barely discernible at first. So weak I think it must be a hallucination born of delusional hope. Even if it is, I am too desperate to care. I follow it blindly, seeking out the current of familiarity.
Caeldera.
Please, gods, let it be Caeldera.
It is so far away. And I am so weak. The pathways before me diverge, branching in various directions. Dizzying directions. My mind is unable to think through the spinning.
What am I looking for?
Nothing.
Something.
The pulse.
Follow the pulse.
Where is it?
It’s disappeared again.
Just as I will disappear.
Perhaps it never existed.
Perhaps you have gone mad.
No.
No.
There is somewhere I need to go.
There is someone I need to see.
A place of grief and ruin.
A man of fury and fire.
Caeldera.
Pendefyre.
The pulse comes again then, on the heels of my defiance. A heartbeat in the abyss, leading me onward. The leylines branch and, at last, I see it. My exit. Far in the distance, brighter than the rest.
More vital.
More alive.
Almost like it is calling me.
Here.
Come here.
Come home.
I fix what little remains of my volition upon it, shut out every other possibility, and with a mental push from somewhere deep within, allow myself to be swept forward through the void.
There is a rush of blinding white, a burst of nauseating speed, and then, with an abruptness that stupefies the senses, I am deposited out of the ephemeral plane and back into the real world.
My bones reassemble, my tendons and sinews stitching back together in the space of a blink.
Solid once more, I lurch forward out of the portal, landing hard on my hands and knees.
Bless the Goddess of Souls for not claiming mine this day.
For a few long seconds, I attempt to find my composure—dragging a series of tremulous breaths into my nose and out through my mouth, waiting for the nausea and disorientation to subside.
Waiting for my scattered thoughts to sort themselves into something resembling normal cognition.
When at last they do, I open my eyes to a luminous white floor of pure quartz.
I blink at it several times, hoping it will shift into the solid, black-veined stone I expected to see.
Hoping, gods, praying that my sight is deceiving me.
When several hard blinks do nothing to alter the smooth crystalline surface, I drag in a breath that is heavy with the intoxicating scent of jasmine, then force myself to look up.
Suspicion solidifies into reality.
Not Caeldera.
Not even close.
I am in a circular chamber, illuminated by flickering candlelight.
Every surface is crafted from the same white mineral, from the walls to the ceiling columns to the expansive bathing pool that takes up half the floor.
Moonlight suffuses the crystal, setting the entire space aglow.
It is as if I’ve stepped inside an earthbound star.
The sunken tub is large enough to fit ten but, at present, contains a sole occupant—one who rises with breathtaking slowness from the steaming water, plants his hands on his naked hips, and stares down at me sprawled on his floor with unguarded amusement.
“If you were so desperate to see me in the nude, skylark, you merely had to ask. No need to sneak into my bathhouse in the middle of the night.”
Still sprawled on my hands and knees, I can only gape up at the King of Ll?r.
Water sluices down his muscular form, dripping from his dark head of hair, running off long, tanned limbs.
It beads on his broad chest, where the dark whorls of his Remnant spiral outward across one well-defined pectoral.
I watch several droplets descend past the mark, beyond the rippled indentations of his abdominal muscles to the line of hair that trails down toward his—
Skies.
My eyes jerk upward. Color sears my cheeks, hot as a flame.
“Soren!”
One dark brow arches. Otherwise, he moves not a muscle. “Yes?”
“You—You’re—” I scramble to my feet, heart pounding hard enough to bruise the inside of my chest cavity. “You’re naked,” I hiss, finally finding my voice.
“Mmm. I generally do not bathe fully clothed. Rather defeats the purpose.”
Staunchly refusing to look lower than his chin, I splutter, “That’s not what I—I did not mean—”
His other brow arches sardonically.
“Could you please,” I force out firmly, “cover yourself with something?”
“Why? Is my nudity bothering you?”
My teeth clench. I turn my head so I am looking at the wall. In the flickering candlelight, the shadows dance across the quartz’s many facets like players on a stage.
“My, my.” He makes a tsk sound. “What a prude you are. I’d have thought after all those years of stitching wounds and soothing fevers, a bit of male flesh would not fluster you so.”
My head whips back around to glare at him—a mistake, for he is still standing tall in the bathwater, his manhood completely exposed. I clap a hand across my eyes.