C14 Chapter XIV

As Urna had correctly assumed, her son had stumbled from the cave and taken his visions with him. The stone forest, turning soft and verdant before his eyes, and the fire in the earth, no longer held back by the thin crust of stone. Sedramon staggered aimlessly through the bushes that surrounded the low rocks with a fever in his head and a pain in his chest where his heart had lost the rhythmic beat of nature. It had been too much. The encounter with a mother he had never known would have been enough to disorient a stronger man than him. The ease with which she had dragged him through the Other World – him, a sorcerer of Ringwall! She considered him a magical weakling, although she had not said so in words.

Sedramon-Per felt humiliated yet strangely exhilarated. Magic, the curse of his life, the master over his dreams and thoughts, the controller of his body, and yet… there was the promise of rising above the magic, no longer being driven by it, but instead bending the primal power himself. Burning determination and reluctance fought a violent battle in his mind.

She told me to practice. As if it were so easy!

His departure from the cave was more of a flight. He ran, stumbled and staggered through the thin trunks of the forest, aimless yet driven. Anything to get away from his mother – anything! But where to go?

When he stopped for the first time he did not know how long he had been running nor what direction he had taken. Quarrysand lay behind him and the puddles, the darkening trees and the changed smell offered a hint to what the place might have looked like before his father had taken some mucklings and made a place where you could build a livelihood. Sedramon hurried to get dry land under his boots. He spent the night hungry and cold, crouched between two bushes; the dew that dripped from them woke him early the next morning.

He gathered up his few possessions and continued on his way. He drank the water from the last swampy puddles and chewed down a handful of watercress in passing; he did not take the liberties of pauses and meals. When the ache in his gut grew too powerful, he would tear loose pieces of bark from nearby trees to sate his hunger. His food consisted mostly of whatever grew on the bark in question: the bitter green moss went down his throat just like the white goatees and the orange, matted mixture of threadhay and serptongue. And so Sedramon rushed through the land in a fever until he finally stopped, his strength consumed by the long distance he had traveled; clutching a tree for support, he vomited up the acidic mix of leaves and bark that had been his breakfast. He stumbled on, but barely three steps later his eyesight left him and the soft mossy ground rushed up to meet him.

When he awoke, he was lying on something soft and looking into two gray eyes that were surrounded by a deep, glowing crimson. His unconsciousness faded into sleep and his fever crept away at the smell of burning herbs and cool leaves that soft hands placed gently on his hot skin. The monotone sing-song voice chased it off entirely.

“Where am I?” Sedramon whispered when he opened his eyes for the first time without the haze of the fever.

“With me,” a slender, white-haired woman said. Sedramon looked into those gray eyes, as bright as a fen-heron’s down feathers on a misty day, as calm as an underground lake that has never been troubled by the wind.

“It will take some time before you can stand again,” she said simply.

With these words she left Sedramon’s sight, and only the rustling of leaves told him she was still somewhere nearby. Sedramon tried to push himself into a better position and get a good look at this unknown woman, but his body would not obey him.

A spicy smell filled his nostrils when next he awoke. He was lying naked on a bed of thin twigs, leaves and dried moss, held together by broad fronds. He managed to raise his head and looked in shame down at his body; his protruding ribs, his bony hips that could have put a mountain elk’s antlers to shame, and a row of short round toes, staring at him like a group of pale judges, silently coming to a verdict. He could not make out anything else. On different parts of his itching body, smoke was unfurling from small, sticky lumps; little piles of bark burned into white ash on his red skin. He could feel the heat and smell the aroma of the burning substances, and something else he could not quite recognize seeped into his body. A gentle hand supported his neck and another brought a wooden bowl with sweet, watery syrup to his mouth. He fell asleep again.

“Where am I?” he repeated when he woke up after a much longer sleep. This time, his voice was stronger; gone was the feverish whisper, in its place a demanding impatience, but his croak had no true force behind it.

“With me.” It was the same answer he had received a few days ago. “But now it is only the two of us.”

“Who else was here?” Sedramon asked, glad that his mind was finally able to start making sense of the world again.

“The fever. It was stubborn and not of this world.”

“Are you a healer?”

“No, merely a simple shamaness and fen-witch attempting to understand the magic of the plants.”

“Forest and fire?” Sedramon asked hastily. Before his eyes, dark green treetops and roaring flames appeared.

“No, neither forest nor fire. Only the plants and the water they grow in. Some of them are very old. You should know the strength of Wood. I can feel the magic of the elements within you.”

“Yes, I know the elements. Still…” Sedramon paused. It would do him more harm than good to spread the word that he could not control the powers that surrounded him.

“You are a powerful sorcerer. I can feel your strength. You could help me as I have helped you. Together, we can achieve much in the worlds of Pentamuria.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. But for now, sleep.”

Sedramon stayed with the fen-witch for a few days until his strength returned. She came and went as she pleased. She cared for him, asked nothing in return and enchanted him with her strange beauty. In the nights they shared a bed and she warmed his burnt-out body. He had rarely felt so happy.

It was only a matter of time until Sedramon could leave his bed. He stood up, fought back a sudden dizziness and walked over to the part of the hut where the branches were less dense; he supposed this was the door. He attempted to push the twigs apart, but they did not give. I’m trapped, he thought with a stab of horror. He pulled at the branches with all the strength he had regained. Not even the leaves rustled under the pressure. He searched for the underlying magic and found Wood and, hidden carefully, Metal.

The fen-witch appeared out of the forest and brushed aside the twigs without issue to enter the hut.

“Are you keeping me locked up in here?” Sedramon asked, frowning darkly.

“Quite the opposite; I’m keeping the world out. Here in the woods you need to be careful that nothing enters the house uninvited. The obvious drawback is that it is more difficult to leave as well,” the witch answered with a small smile as she stroked Sedramon’s cheek. He flinched away. He did not feel like tenderness at the moment.

“I could do with some food. Something solid to see if my teeth are still there.”

“If you’ll help me skin and gut the beast, we can go hunting.”

Sedramon was not sure whether he had regained enough strength to go on the hunt, but he nodded silently nonetheless.

“Then come.”

The shamaness simply dragged him along. Sedramon tried his hardest to move silently, even though he knew there would be no game in the immediate area of the hut. To his surprise, they did not have to go far. They stopped at the edge of a clearing full of overgrown grass and colorful herbs. The shamaness laid a finger to her lips.

Before long a movement on the other side of the clearing caught Sedramon’s eye. A small pack of ocaps pushed their way through the undergrowth, perfectly disguised by the light stripes on their coats; they almost looked like part of the grass around them. They stepped cautiously out into the open, sniffing the air through their pointed snouts. The calves began to graze immediately while their mothers looked around; once they were satisfied there was no danger, they joined their young. The bull remained upright as a sentinel. He would only eat when the others were full.

One of the young ones had strayed from the pack and Sedramon wondered how they were supposed to slay it. They had not brought any weapons and they had missed the opportunity to lay traps. A slender white hand beside him made a slight motion in the air, and from the earth sprouted green shoots, reluctant at first, but then faster and faster. They formed a soft, swaying circle around the carefree animal. More and more shoots rose from the earth and the circle grew tighter. Sedramon could taste the Wood upon the air. The animal suddenly realized that it was surrounded and flung itself against the new growth, which swayed from the impact, but was too densely woven to let it out.

The noise the shoots made was so loud that the other animals fled in blind panic. Only the calf was caught alone, and it stared around with wide eyes and trembling legs.

“There’s our dinner,” the shamaness laughed. “Now we just need to fetch it.” With these words she raised her right hand as if she was pulling threads from a blanket, at which sharp boughs broke through the ground and speared the calf. Its legs struggled and it opened its mouth in a cry of pain. Then it was over.

“Can you carry it?” the woman asked Sedramon. “I must cover our trail and hide the traces of magic. Otherwise, the animals won’t come back to this place, despite the tasty food I’ve laid out for them here.”

“You slew it with magic,” Sedramon said in wonder. In Ringwall, he had never stopped to consider where his meat came from. Back in Quarrysand they had kept cattle and geese, ducks and chickens. Game was generally hunted with bow and arrow, or with a spear. The mucklings would use traps. But he had never once seen an animal killed by magical means.

“What did you expect? Why do you think we even have magic?”

“But wasn’t it cruel spearing it through the belly?”

“No crueler than a stroke with a sword.”

“Yes, but…” Sedramon could not formulate a proper argument against it, but his stomach turned at the idea of using magic in a hunt. Suddenly he saw an unknown coldness beneath the lovely face, and the gray of her eyes put him more in mind of glaciers than summer clouds. And he heard his mother’s voice in his head, warning him of half-shamanesses.

“What are you? A witch or a shamaness?” he asked flatly.

Perhaps he was imagining it, but the answer seemed a little reluctant.

“A bit of each. Yes, I am a shamaness, but first and foremost, I am a witch. Would you like me to bewitch you?” she asked with a slightly forced laugh.

“I think you’ve already done that,” he admitted, and he cast aside his caution and laid his arms around her.

Their supper was rich and nourishing. Despite his qualms earlier, the calf tasted outstanding, and he felt his strength return. He rose from his seat and stretched, off-handedly brushing at the twigs that made up the door as he did so. For a moment they resisted, but then gave way willingly. Sedramon looked over his shoulder and saw those big eyes above smiling lips. He stepped outside.

At first I thought she’s keeping me locked up here, but I’m probably just imagining it.

The laughter died in his throat when he noticed that the plants became less and less compliant the further he moved from the hut. Even the small leaves were as rigid as the tip of a spear.

“Have you drawn a shield around us?” Sedramon called towards the hut.

“Yes,” the answer rang out. “The shield you’re feeling is a witch’s hex. Nobody can come through unless we let them. Our sleep is safe. No one will dare disturb us, and should they try, they won’t find a way through.”

“A hex?” Sedramon repeated.

“What else? Would you like to learn how to do it? I can show you.”

Sedramon gave a non-committal grunt and returned to the hut.

“I really should move on soon,” he said. “I’m looking for something I won’t find here.”

“I know, my love, but the time is not yet. You will not find what you seek at this moment.”

“How would you know? Is knowledge of the future part of your Witchcraft?” Sedramon fought to keep his voice light and upbeat. This time, the hesitation in the answer was definite.

“The future is closed to me. I am no timerider. But I can read the magical patterns of our world. I am not ignorant – Pentamuria changes with every cycle the sun makes. And the changes are coming faster. You and I are part of this change.”

“You could come with me,” Sedramon suggested.

“Weren’t you listening? It’s not your time yet.” Her voice assumed an unfamiliar sharp tone.

“One might be forgiven for thinking that you’re expecting something. What’s worth waiting for, then?” Sedramon forced his own voice to be soft and calm to counter the Metal in hers.

“Can’t you feel it? Do you truly want to know? Then I will tell you. You can only leave once we have managed to combine our magics. Your elemental magic, so strong it only obeys you reluctantly, and whatever lies behind it that I can’t recognize, even though your aura screams it out into the world; and my Witchcraft, and…” she stopped. “There is something else; something you’re not ready for. But it must all be put together to a single aura. There are many ways to do this, but they all take time.”

“You know me well enough, it seems. I’m still far from being able to claim mastery over the elements and I certainly don’t intend to walk any dangerous roads while I’m still little more than a novice. As for combining magics – why? All it can result in is an early death or insanity.”

“Whoever told you that was either weak or didn’t want you to become strong. Even now, more than one magic slumbers within you. Why do you think you have these difficulties with the elemental magic in the first place? But it will pass. I have already undergone one such combination. Trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about. Together, you and I can reach a peak of magic no one has ever climbed before. Knowledge and power – are they not what sorcerers live for?”

“I don’t know what I live for, and I’ll have to find out the answer to that before I make any decisions. Forest and fire, wherever they are, will give me that answer. I will leave tomorrow and I would be glad if you accompanied me.”

It was a cold night and their bodies, usually so warm, seemed to lap up every last bit of heat in the tiny hut. Sleep came knocking several times, but it, too, seemed locked out by the hex. Accordingly, when he got up the next morning, Sedramon felt shattered. He did not give up. He packed his few possessions as two gray eyes glared at him mockingly.

Sedramon flung his bag over his shoulder, tried to part the twigs and turned around when he failed.

“Do you mean to keep me here forever?” he asked calmly.

“Why not?” the witch asked back. “Birds you don’t lock up keep flying away… but here, see how I trust you.” She raised a hand and the twigs fell lankly aside.

Sedramon stepped outside and enjoyed the first light of a sky where the sun had not quite risen. The trees were still black as the night, but they would soon change to dark green. Sedramon was not fooled. She had opened the door, but the shield still kept him prisoner.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said, “but now let me leave.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No means no. I’m not letting you leave. Do you honestly think I spent days nursing you back to health, cooling your fever by day and warming your body by night for you to just pack up and leave? No, you will stay until I say otherwise.”

An overwhelming mixture of emotions crashed down on Sedramon’s head: rage and anger, but also fear and helplessness, for he knew he was no match for the witch’s magic.

“Beware of half-shamans,” he heard his mother’s voice again. “They combine knowledge with power.”

“As you wish,” he heard himself say meekly, and he laid aside his bags. He sat back down as if nothing had happened, but his insides were boiling, and Sedramon was amazed at the raw strength of his feelings.

The witch kept talking as though they had never disagreed and Sedramon stared into the small fire they cooked on.

“When you understand, you’ll find your voice again. You’ll see.”

The day seemed to pass far slower than usual. Sedramon sat silently beside the fire and explored his feelings. When night fell, he laid down on his bed and put his bag next to him as a silent sign of protest. The witch smiled, but said nothing.

The pale full moon woke him. Sedramon sat upright and clutched his bag and gathered himself. He knew he had only one chance to escape. “Not all of them came back,” his mother had said. But what choice did he have? He had to try.

Sedramon-Per leapt to the Plains of the Dead and saw with elation that his bag had traveled with him.

So does that mean my body followed my spirit?

he wondered and leapt further. Nothing makes a man faster than a woman on his heels. Sedramon did not know the Other World, but he focused on the image of the forest from his vision and sprang back.

It was dark. The air smelled familiar enough to tell him he had returned to his world. There were no embers nearby, no deep breaths. Wherever he was, it was no longer the witch’s hut. He was certain, now, that she was a half-shamaness, living somewhere on the border between Water and Wood. All he smelled and heard told him that he was in a forest, but he could not have said where this forest was.

Sedramon-Per had not quite reached the Plains of the Dead when the witch jerked awake. The magic of the Other World filled the void where Sedramon had just been. The witch sprang after him, but the plains were now empty of living bodies and souls. She was too late.

Back in her hut, she screamed into the night: “Curse you, curse your hair and the magic in you, curse every breath you take! Every step and all the stones you tread on, curse them all!”

She screamed with her entire body writhing in the storm of hatred that engulfed her. Saliva flew from her mouth and her gray eyes darkened to black.

Sedramon was too far away for her fury to reach him, yet he heard the witch’s words, so mighty were they. At first they were mere words reaching his ears, sounds without meaning, but a part of these words passed his ears and pierced his skin and hovered just outside his skull. At the edges of the bone, where there was an opening in his early childhood to let in the powers of the skies, the words found tiny grooves they could convene in. Sedramon felt the siege of this unknown thing; the first, shadowy attempts to reach his spirit. He knew he had to stop the words from entering into his body. The air he breathed was not poisoned, the stones he trod on did not mean him harm. He himself would be the one to consider air and earth his enemies, foes he could not escape and which would consequently defeat him. Nobody can defeat their own breath. He could not allow it to happen.

But he felt strong against curses. He had already dissolved one curse, back in Ringwall. A curse was no more than a confusion of the elements, just like a poison, manifested by a wish or a promise and sent through the magic of the Other World. Sedramon re-ordered the elements and attempted to stifle the magic of the Other World. But this was not a neophyte’s curse, spoken by accident with what little force a child could muster. Malice was strong in this one; a force that knew what it wanted. The elements, barely re-ordered, fell apart again and the magic of the Other World resisted his attempts to subjugate it. It expanded and surrounded him and picked away at his body.

Sedramon leapt back into the Other World, taking care to leave his body behind this time. He turned around and looked down upon himself. Part of his self had remained. A torn phantasm, cloaked in gray, with the colorful tips of disturbed elements. Sedramon-Per concentrated the Other World’s magic around himself as best he could and made it stream towards his own aura. The instant the two collided, he leapt again and rode the flow of time. Nothing was fast enough to follow him through time, nothing was all-knowing enough to know where the past and the future lie. Sedramon had escaped the curse, but in the visions that came to him the white-haired witch’s face kept appearing, her gray eyes glaring. He knew they would meet again.

The later words the witch spoke were not curses. They were sacred oaths. It was a good thing Sedramon could not hear them.

*

On the fourth day after Nill’s arrival, three Oas came to the village. A young woman with light hair, easily recognizable as a relation of the eldest, was followed by a stout warrior; from her hips hung two clubs, and on her back she carried an old woman, whose fragile legs likely made a longer journey impossible alone.

The Oas fell to their knees as they approached and bowed their heads. The three women made their way through the villagers without paying them any attention and entered the hut of the eldest. When the door fell shut, the Oas rose again and gathered around the hut.

“Never would have guessed such a display of reverence to come from the Oas. At least it looks like something’s happening now,” Brolok murmured hopefully. Every day they had spent waiting had passed slower than the previous one. “I wish I knew what.”

His nerves were put to the test. The Oas stood, still and silent, before the hut. The sun set, and as it crossed the horizon it gave the impression that the world was on fire. Following the red came violet across the sky, darkening until finally the black treetops were indiscernible from the heavens above. A long time later, the twigs and branches reappeared as the sky lightened. Nobody had retired to sleep that night, not even the children. They had simply fallen asleep in their mothers’ arms.

Brolok and Bairne waited impatiently for the door to reopen. Rather than that, when the sun broke through, a young Oa stepped towards them and said: “It is time. Take the mage to the water.”

Brolok and Bairne were no wiser than before, but they dutifully carried Nill to the bank of one of the small rivers that surrounded the village. Half the villagers followed them; the other half was already waiting by the waterside. Brolok exchanged glances with his wife when he saw that the wise women had already taken their place.

“How’d they get here? I swear, I never blinked last night. That door never opened.”

Bairne’s face, too, showed signs of curiosity. The crone who had arrived on the warrior’s back the previous day was now sitting on the ground, clad in blankets to protect her from the damp cold of the early morning. On her left and right sides, respectively, sat Haraak and the other light-haired woman who looked as though she might be her sister. In front of them stood a huge drum, and the warrior began to beat the skin in a measured rhythm.

Bam, bam!

“Lay him in my lap.” The old woman’s voice was little more than a croak, as though it had been unused for a long time. Silence was golden, after all.

“Heh… a handsome boy,” she chuckled as she stroked Nill’s cheek with a withered hand. “Let us begin.”

Brolok and Bairne stepped back in alarm at the sudden concentration of magic that seemed to come from every direction at once, vibrating in time to the drum. They did not understand. Neither the magic of the five elements nor the intricacies of Witchcraft had anything even remotely similar to this. Central to all this magic was the drum. Brolok knew this from Tiriwi: the drum connected the magic to the primal pulse of all life. That was all he remembered on the matter.

The three Oas in the middle swayed slowly to the rhythm; their faces were cheerful and the crone’s lips were curved in a smile. They appeared to be singing, but quietly, more inside their heads than out loud. Nill lay still and motionless.

When the singing died down, the two sisters vacated their spots beside the old woman and pulled Nill’s legs apart before sitting back down. The three Oas now formed a triangle, their helping hands at Nill’s head and both his feet. All the while, the crone held the magic like a canopy above the small group. The singing began anew.

Bairne nudged Brolok in the side. She had been the first to notice: the brook had fallen silent. It had stopped flowing and the water level was slowly rising. At the same time it began to rain. Brolok looked up. The sky was checkered blue and white except for a small cloud directly above them which grew steadily darker. It was the source of the cold. The river overflowed and reached the three Oas, and Brolok pulled Bairne away.

“We don’t need to be sitting in the mud too.”

Nill had begun to convulse. His heels hammered the soft earth and dug holes into it, which the water promptly filled. The hammering turned into splashing and then into squelching when the water turned the ground into mud. And the rain fell harder still.

What then happened was blocked from view for all except the three Oas, for around them the mud rose and the cloud came down. They disappeared in the small space between the sky and the earth, in the darkness of grayish brown from below and deep black from above.

A scream broke the tense silence, as sad and desperate as if a hundred generations of pain was being put into it. Ramsker leapt up and Brolok’s fingers dug into Bairne’s upper arm; she would feel the ache there for days. But at that moment she felt nothing at all. She was cold and lifeless like an empty snail’s shell.

A second scream chorused with the first, this one a shriek of rage, disgust and disappointment. The two screams clashed until they finally found a common pitch; for a short moment, every last corner of every unused chamber in the village was filled with the twin voices, driving out every other sound. Then – silence. The drumming stopped. Bairne and Brolok regained consciousness, as did everyone around them.

The river was gurgling and splashing again, and the sky was clear. The black cloud had evaporated and the sun regained control of the heavens. Its first rays broke in the puddles and transformed the raindrops that still clung to leaves, hairs and clothes alike into sparkling diamonds. Everywhere they looked, it shone, and the nature around them glowed in all its beauty. It was glorious, yet cold; the sun had not yet warmed the place. Yet, Brolok thought dully.

Nill’s eyes flickered open and he muttered weakly: “Can you teach me? Whatever you just did…”

But his voice was too quiet, or the Oas’ ears not yet receptive. Perhaps they had not yet woken from the ritual; whatever the case, his words were unheard. With one exception.

“Nearly dead and gasping for more knowledge,” he grunted thickly. To his surprise, he was fighting back tears.

The four bodies – Nill and the three healers – lay on the ground as if they were dead. The Oas carefully carried them back to the huts.

When Brolok and Bairne were later allowed to see Nill, a strange scene greeted them. The two wise sisters, as Brolok thought of them, were sitting by one wall, their arms around each other’s shoulders, shaking and exhausted. Deep lines of weariness had carved themselves into their faces, and Bairne was not so sure these would go away after a good night’s sleep. Nill was lying in the middle of the room on a stack of furs, beneath a thick quilt that covered him from head to toe. With him lay the old woman. He clung to her like a babe to its mother, and appeared fast asleep. Only the occasional twitch of an eyelid disturbed the peaceful picture.

“The power she must have,” Brolok said under his breath, his face mirroring the amazement and admiration he felt inside for once. “All the time she had that magical field stretched over everyone and now she looks younger than the sisters.”

Bairne looked thoughtful. “It’s an illusion,” she said finally. “The youthfulness you see in her is merely the peace she feels. The old woman is as good as dead. She has no more strength to give, and her protective embrace is an empty gesture. Nill is the only thing keeping her alive.”

“How would you know?” Brolok hissed. He hissed quietly, for he did not want to disturb the sleepers, but sharply. He was not used to Bairne contradicting him, considering she rarely spoke at all.

“All witches can read and understand auras. Just like the Oas. Maybe because we’re women – I don’t know the reasons.”

Bairne fell silent again, and despite his best efforts Brolok was not able to squeeze any further information from her.

Bairne and Brolok spent the following days and nights in the common house where the Oas’ guests were traditionally sheltered. It was a small house, hardly worthy of the name, which showed all too clearly how rare visitors were in this village. Guests were always men. Mostly they were druids. Sorcerers and warlocks were a rare sight, and not a welcome one, and they knew it. Mages were all but unknown here: those who had been accepted into Ringwall usually did not leave the city, and everyone knew that the stilted politeness between the mages and the Oas was a thin cover for the deep dislike they shared. However, guests were the reason the Oas never died out. The daughters that came from these short unions stayed with their people; the sons spent their first few springs there, but were always adopted by their fathers once that carefree time had passed, and grew up to learn the Druidic ways. Nobody really knew how the fathers knew about their sons, the same mystery posed by birds and how they know that it is time to brood. Sorcerers and warlocks never returned after a visit, and if no one could be found to take the small boys, they were abandoned. It seemed cruel, but this was the way of the Oas.

It was not an instinctual mistrust of strangers, therefore, that made the Oas give the common house a wide berth.

Brolok pondered. He wanted to leave this place where he was unwanted. The Oas who lived here were not like Tiriwi. Only Nill kept him here. The nights were the worst for him. You cannot fight against dreams; neither steel nor tactics will help. They come faster and quieter than smoke and mist and steal your breath before you can even blink. Sometimes, they are little more than disjointed feelings, accompanied by wishes and fears; other times, they are fully-formed figures from the past, whose faces you know and whose presence wakes memories. They choke you like a mountain slide and are just as unstoppable.

They were always the same people Brolok saw. His grandfather he admired so, strong, hard and strict, with an aura that filled his entire dream. His mother, motionless in the darkness, all magic rebounding off her. His father, lying on the ground, propped up on his arms, struggling desperately to get to his feet. His father fought. Oh, how he fought. But against what? Brolok did not know.

The dreams always ended the same way: Talldal-Fug’s sorcerers beating him and his family with their staves. His panicked screams woke him and Bairne wiped the sweat from his brow and held him until he stopped shaking.

Tonight, it was different. The dream’s end, usually so predictable, had changed. The court sorcerers had him cornered. All he had was a small round shield, leather, its edges strengthened by silver braces. Under the sorcerer’s blows the silver grew dull and dented, the braces lost their shape until they flowed across the leather like water and covered the entire shield. Over the shield, the air flickered with dark gray Metal energy.

Brolok was now holding the shield with both arms, pushing the sorcerers back. He turned his head and saw that he was no longer alone. To his left stood Galvan, the master of Metal, holding the edge of his shield; to his right he felt a beam of light surrounding Tiriwi. With one last push, the sorcerers were knocked through the room and vanished. Galvan and Tiriwi disappeared. His grandfather and parents were now standing there in awe, dwarf-like in stature at his feet. Galvan, by my side? Brolok wondered doubtfully. And Tiriwi, too?

“Everything alright?” Bairne’s high voice brought him back to the day.

“Yes, everything’s alright. Where were you and Nill? Whenever I need you, the two of you aren’t there,” Brolok quipped.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” Brolok laughed. “A joke. I had a dream and the two of you weren’t in it. It happens, you know.”

“Yes, it does,” Bairne agreed. “But you shouldn’t keep your eyes open for things that aren’t there in your dreams.”

Brolok knew that a dream that returned to him nightly had to mean something. He had to find out what the dream was trying to tell him, or he would find no rest. But who would help him with that? His father? Hardly. Galvan? Maybe, but that would have taken him to Ringwall; besides, he doubted that the master of Metal would stoop to talking to a half-arcanist about dreams.

Tiriwi!

Brolok was surprised to note that he had never spoken with her about dreams. Did Oas even dream? Even if they did, could Tiriwi tell him anything about his family? Oas did not have real families, after all. Only halves.

Brolok left the common house and hurried over to Nill, the same as he did every morning. Nill, for his part, was weakened, but in excellent health, and his morning’s greetings were uncharacteristically jovial.

“It’s about time we moved on, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Brolok.

“You sure you’re strong enough yet?” Brolok asked in reply, as if he cared not where they went or stayed. “Wouldn’t want you falling over after ten steps.”

“If I do, I happen to know a certain strong young fellow who’d be delighted to carry me on his back. And I also happen to have an even stronger ram to carry my things.”

“Sure, I’ll heave you over my shoulder like a sack of greencorn. Mind you, I’ve had sacks of greencorn yell at me to put them down because they felt sick.”

“You know shaken greencorn doesn’t sprout properly.” Nill laughed. He felt reborn.

“So,” Brolok’s voice grew more serious, “what exactly was wrong with you, that your own magic couldn’t find a way out? What did the Oas do?”

“Hard to say, really, and harder still to explain. The Oas don’t know the magic of the five elements. They told me that my earth and my sky had more darkness than light in them, and that I wasn’t alone as a bridge between the two. Something had got stuck in the middle, and when you can’t connect sky and earth, your spirit gets sick.”

Brolok scratched at his scalp. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, the last thing I remember is the fight against the huge giant. I fought him in the Other World. That could be the darkness they were talking about. Anyway, the giant’s spirit, and the strange sorcerer whose magic I could only see once I knew what I was looking for, went out during the fight. He was a giant, but he wasn’t really a match for me. I defeated him easily, and the more I think about it, the more I believe I was supposed to have an easy time of it. In his last attack before he died, he merged with me, somehow. The same way a small animal might sink its teeth into whatever’s killing it before it loses its life.”

“The Other World is still a mystery to me. I suppose it’s not a half-arcanist’s place,” Brolok grumbled.

“You never know until you try. I could take you there, if you want.”

Brolok threw his hands in the air in mock shock. “Oh, please, you don’t have to. I might love mines and tunnels and dark, dingy forges, but you can overdo it with darkness.”

“What really makes me wonder about the whole thing,” Nill continued, “is that this wasn’t the first attack from the Other World. The first one was Amargreisfing. He wanted to kill me.”

Nill told Brolok the story of his encounter with Ringwall’s founder, and the one about the demon in the valley. When he was done, there was silence for a moment. Nill had his hands clasped together, twiddling his thumbs absent-mindedly. After a long time he raised his head and found Brolok’s concerned gaze.

“This last attack is the one that worries me. This one was hidden. Again, with the magic of the Other World, but more than that. There was something else involved, something that felt familiar but I just can’t place it. It wasn’t elemental magic, nothing from the Other World, not ancient magic like the falundron. Or maybe it was? I don’t know. Bairne might know something about it. I’ve no idea who’s after my life. I know his voice and his laugh, that’s it. It must be someone who knows me well, but I’ve never heard the voice in my life.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. You can change your voice.” He spoke the last words in a rather unsuccessful imitation of Bairne’s usual soft whisper.

“I’ll find out sooner or later,” Nill said. “I don’t think he’ll give up so easily. Anyway, if it’s my opinion you want, we can leave immediately. We don’t have much to pack.”

“Immediately? Before breakfast?” Brolok looked deeply unsettled at the thought.

“Good point. We can say our farewells to our hosts while we eat. Alright?”

“Sure. You pack your things, I’ll go and tell Bairne.”

To Brolok’s surprise, Bairne had already stowed her things in her bags. Brolok’s possessions were scattered all around the room.

“How’d you know we’re moving on today? Besides, why haven’t you packed my things if you knew? Are you walking out on me?” Brolok joked.

Bairne jerked upright and stared at him.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon. I thought you were having breakfast,” she said quietly. Brolok did not notice the slight twitch of her lower lip, but the other signs were obvious enough. Bairne stood there, stiff as a lance, seeming oddly disconnected and lost.

“What’s wrong? We’re moving on,” Brolok repeated.

“You’re moving on. Our time together is over.”

Brolok felt dazed. “You’re… leaving me?”

Bairne nodded sadly. “I don’t want to, but I must.”

“No wife should leave her husband!”

“I have to. Good luck.”

“Good luck! How can you wish me good luck and walk out on me?”

“You and Nill have to move on. My path leads me back.”

“Listen. Listen to me, Bairne. You can’t go back to Metal World. Talldal-Fug’s henchmen are after you as much as Nill and me.”

“I’m staying in the Waterways. I can’t leave.”

“If I’ve done anything wrong…”

“No,” Bairne cut him off. “No, Brolok. It’s just that our paths lead in opposite directions.”

Brolok gazed into the eyes of the woman he had married without seeing anything in them. His hands closed to fists, then opened again, then closed – he could not stop trembling. Bairne stood opposite him and returned his gaze. Only her shallow, quick breathing betrayed that there was more beneath the surface.

“Why did you come to me, then, if you’re just going to leave?” Brolok’s voice was quiet and flat, but every word reached Bairne clearly.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then leave. Leave and never let me see you again.” Brolok felt cold as ice. Bairne swallowed. Then she turned her back on him and continued packing as though Brolok was no longer there. Not in this world, and certainly not in this hut.

Brolok stormed out of the common house with long strides. He knew he would put a great distance behind himself today, sleep badly tonight and be shattered tomorrow.

He choked down his breakfast in silence. He did not like the taste.

“What’s wrong, Brolok?”

Nill would have been blind to miss that something had changed.

“Bairne’s gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘Bairne’s gone’?” Nill asked bemusedly.

Brolok recounted in few words what had happened.

Nill took a few minutes of silence. Then, cautiously, he asked: “What do you know about her?”

“Now you mention it… nothing. She was just… there, one day. And she stayed.”

“Do you love her?”

“Right now? You can bet your ears on the answer. I’m angry. You don’t just leave.”

“Bairne seems to be able to. Did you know how powerful she is?”

“Might have guessed… no, not at all. When I was healthy, she never needed magic. When I wasn’t, she couldn’t help me. Now that I think about it, the first time I even noticed was when we were getting you out of that cell and she turned into a rat, or summoned one, or something. But it was all over too quickly to think. We had to get out.”

“What happened by the fire?” Nill asked.

“I don’t know,” Brolok answered honestly. “I was fighting for my life. I wondered why it was so easy once I’d killed one of them. One against ten isn’t the best odds. Bairne must have interfered somehow.”

“One of us will see her again, Brolok. You or me. All I know is this: she wasn’t in your life by accident. Now come, let’s say our farewells.”

“No need to thank us,” the crone said when Nill and Brolok had done just that. “Our fates are intertwined. Yours, the Oas,’ and likely even that of Brolok the Blacksmith. It makes for a good story, a mage being healed by an Oa. Some will believe it, some will not. What you have given the Oas, we do not yet understand. And the burden you have laid on us is far beyond our reckoning. But such is fate. Our good wishes be with you on your travels.”

Nill embraced the three wise women and turned away. With Metal World at his back, the Waterways beneath his feet, Woodhold in his gaze and Brolok by his side, he reflected.

Life is beautiful.