C8 Chapter VIII

As every great change in the world is heralded by countless tremors, so too is every great deed preceded by many smaller ones, far from the centers of power, cloaked in unimportance. The druids know this, and so they walk the land, traveling through villages and cities, always searching for harbingers of fate, those inconspicuous happenings, small miracles, disappointments and triumphs. They, the druids, are the ones who keep a lookout for the threads and knots of the great web of the world, who pay attention to the spinning wheel of time, who attempt to see the bigger picture that shows the future as the past envisioned it. No one saw it clearer than Dakh-Ozz-Han.

The heavy wooden door in the high wall opened noiselessly. The man with long, matted, reddish-brown hair squeezed through the gap and stood in the courtyard until someone took notice of him.

“Hey, you! What do you want?”

The man lowered his head to accentuate the obvious fact that he was neither lord nor proud warrior. Quite the opposite, in fact. In spite of his size, there was an unobtrusiveness about him that caused many to simply overlook him.

“I seek shelter for the night and some food, if it’s not too much to ask.”

The servant opened his mouth, likely in preparation for a harsh reply, but seemed to think better of it and indicated a corner of the courtyard.

“Over there you’ll find the entrance to the stables, and there,” he pointed a little further, “down the stairs, is the kitchen. If the master has no problem with it, you may stay.”

The man nodded gratefully. “Thank you. Would you be so kind and tell your lord Hermanis-Per that a weary traveler has asked for refuge and would like to meet him to thank him for his hospitality in person.” The stranger’s voice had assumed an adjuratory tone, and the servant was not in the least surprised that this smelly wanderer knew his lord’s name.

“And please inform him that I will be in the stable.” The stranger dragged his feet through the summer dust, yet peculiarly he left no tracks.

“Send him forth, or…” Hermanis-Per considered, “leave him in the stables, just make sure he doesn’t sneak around. Folk like him steal where they can.”

“Master, he wishes to speak with you.”

“With me?” Hermanis-Per gave a short, surprised laugh. “The vagabonds grow more brazen with every passing day.”

“He said he wanted to thank you in person,” the servant explained. Hermanis-Per glanced towards the stables before fixing his eyes again on the servant.

“I will take care of matters,” he growled. “I do not want him here in the house. You may go.”

The lord sat with his chin cupped in his hand and stared out of the window, where his gaze lost itself in the vast fields. The immelgrain promised a rich harvest, and the grass was more lush than it had been for a long time, and had granted them a good first cut. Hay for winter was secured. The estate fed the family and those who depended on them. But the rumors that passed like rain through the villages and disquieted the rabble cost him many hours of sleep, and Hermanis had difficulty in concealing it. He knew more than others. He had always known more, but that was nobody’s business.

He finally heaved his large body from its comfortable seat and hurried down the stairs with astonishing lightness for a man his size. He strolled through the courtyard, looking left and right as he did so, eyes always open for signs of trouble where he needed to set things right. He took his time with it; a druid should never feel as though their presence warranted urgency. It had to be a druid he was harboring in his stable, he reasoned. Any common drifter would have been sent away at the gate. And if not a druid, then certainly at least another kind of arcanist. Before he entered the stable, he loosened his dagger from its sheath. He had barely stepped over the threshold when his attitude changed completely.

“I can smell you, you old vagrant. Come into the light.”

“You could do with being a little more pleasant, Lord Quarrysand.”

“And why would I do that?” Hermanis-Per’s laugh echoed dimly in the wooden stable. “You are not very welcome here, as you can no doubt imagine. Had I been on the hunt, and had I found you as I sought a bush to relieve myself, then… then I might, under the good sun, fresh air and birdsong’s influence, might have lent you my ear. But here?”

With these words, so at odds with his actual feelings, he embraced the dark figure tightly. He whispered in the wanderer’s ear. “It’s good to see you again, Dakh, but it’s far too dangerous here. For both of us, and for different reasons, as you should know.”

Dakh-Ozz-Han returned the hug with equal joyful pressure and replied: “Hermanis, you are who you are, and that means you are always still partly what you once were. You have a grand place here, and you have earned it well. I will not endanger you.”

“Come, we’ll go inside the house. I will have to be terribly rude to you, but the food ought to make up for it. We’ll have the chance to talk about old times later.”

A sound came from the druid’s throat that was difficult to interpret. “We should stay here, Hermanis. I have already made sure that no one will miss your presence, and when I go, none shall remember I was ever here. I hope.”

“But we can at least sit down?” Hermanis-Per suggested and tugged the druid over to a feeding trough. “I’m always glad to see you, but I’ve learned that your visits are never without reason.”

“And so it is this time too. Pentamuria is overripe. So ripe, it threatens to burst. We stand at the crossroads to changing times.”

“The Great Change we all fear so much?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

Hermanis-Per barked a laugh. “I may have been a lord for a long time now, and the magic of numbers and harvests take up more of my life than the magic of the arcane, but I am still part of your world. You said so yourself.”

“So are all nobles and kings and lords.”

The lord gave a contemptuous snort. “I have my doubts. They’re more concerned with their power and influence than anything, but enough of them. What about the coming change?”

“I am almost certain you are a part of it. Did you know you have a son, and likely a grandson as well?”

“Sons and grandsons?” Hermanis-Per’s laugh was loud enough to make the horses nervously twitch. “I could hardly count them even if I had ten more hands.”

“I mean neither your trueborn sons nor the army of bastards you have left in your wake. I mean – as you know full well, you scoundrel – Sedramon, the only bastard you honored with your Per. Sedramon-Per, the dragon between sea and mountain. I always thought you were mad to give a child such a name. But these days I wonder whether you didn’t know more than you let on, even then. No matter!” Dakh-Ozz-Han clapped a hand to his thigh loudly.

“To understand the future, I must know where Sedramon is. The old dog knows how to hide; neither the mages of Ringwall nor I have been able to find him. But I am not the only one looking for him. Nature itself has been awakened and keeps its many eyes out for him. Only an archmage, and likely only one of those sinister fellows, has the skills to cast such a spell. Perhaps it was the magon himself.”

“And how could I help you, Dakh?” Hermanis-Per looked rather abashed, like a young boy who has shattered his mother’s vase in carelessness. “I sent him to Ringwall when he was old enough. As any good father would. Well, he wasn’t quite that young anymore. I’ll admit I took more time than usual with him. After that I only saw him once. It makes me sad to say it. You know he was always my favorite. After he finished his studies at Ringwall, he stood here in the yard one day, out of the blue. How happy I was! I had such plans for him. But he never meant to stay. He had only come to say goodbye, and I never saw him after that. In my dreams, sometimes. The elements alone know how he managed to find me in my sleep, but even that stopped happening ages ago.”

“And not a word of that was true, you old liar. Tell me exactly what happened. Every detail. Leave nothing out.”

Hermanis-Per could not suppress a grin. “I see it like it was yesterday, Dakh.” And he spoke.

“I saw him standing there. I always thought that my home was his home too. But when I saw him, a little lost and so insecure, I began to doubt. That was the only reason I stood still at the window, watching him, instead of going down and greeting him immediately. It was only a few moments. The commoners took notice of him quickly. All the people here liked him. I would rather he had kept a good distance from the rabble. If you’re too close to them they lose respect. But commanding never interested him.

“I left my position at the window and stepped out into the yard, and he ran towards me. We shared a hug and all my doubts vanished, scattered to the winds. He had seen seventeen harvests by then, and was a head taller than me; but he was still as skinny as a signpost. I’ll leave others to judge who was embracing who. I thought it unwise to make a scene before the rabble, so we returned to my private chambers for a talk between men.”

Hermanis-Per shifted his weight uncomfortably on the trough and made a few half-hearted gestures; evidently, he did not know how to continue.

“Well, I offered him the position of resident sorcerer. I hoped he would eventually take over my estate. It was risky business, as you can imagine, Dakh, but I would have found a way somehow. Trust me. I would have managed. Risang, my eldest, is good with a blade and his two younger brothers are honest and hard-working, but you need more than a strong arm and a thick skin to keep this place alive. Sedramon would have been the right choice, I’m sure of it. He would soon enough have learned the few remaining things he didn’t know. But before I had the chance to tell him of all my plans, he crushed them.”

Hermanis paused again. Dakh began to show the first signs of impatience.

“He told me he’d only come to say goodbye.”

“By the sky and the earth and the five elements between them, stop making such a mystery of things!” Dakh snapped. “We’re not entertaining a party at a campfire here! I must find your son. Tell me all you know.”

Hermanis’ mouth tightened as he frowned and straightened up.

“He admitted that he was not made for sorcery. He was scared, and not afraid to show it. He said that the magic took hold of him, not the other way around. I had to prod and poke a little, but in the end he told me that he was a respectable healer and was able to cast a curse or two. Dakh, be honest, who ever heard of a neophyte using curses? I knew he had an extraordinary gift, one he was not ready for, and I offered to continue his education myself. But he didn’t want to hear of it. He suggested – with a straight face, mind you – that I should make Risang my resident sorcerer.”

Dakh-Ozz-Han froze. “And what did you tell him?” he whispered.

“I told him that neither his mother nor I had been able to grant Risang or any of our other sons more than a drop of magic.”

“Continue,” Dakh said.

“And Sedramon said that he knew I was his father, but my wife was not his mother. It took me by surprise. It wasn’t the words he said, but the way he said them. As if that tiny detail explained everything. I sowed my seed among many a fertile woman and never kept it quiet. I made sure they were cared for. But Sedramon had always been something special to me, and I always let him know it. And now he was standing before me and we said nothing to each other until he finally asked me, ‘Father, I know you, but who is my mother?’”

“And did you tell him?”

“Not at first. I didn’t want to. I never told anyone, not even you, Dakh. It’s nobody’s bloody business. I tried to talk about myself, told him how I came to own this piece of land, how I turned Quarrysand and the swampy mess around it into an arable, respectable bit of country. I implied I had a secret to keep of my own, and that I wasn’t the man everyone thought I was. But he cared not for my mysteries save for one – his mother. He asked and asked and asked, and in the end, I gave in.”

“I think, Hermanis, it is time you told an old friend a little of your favored bastard’s parentage. Worry has brought me here, not curiosity. Your son has a decisive part to play in this mad dance of magic. Everything points towards him. But which role this is, I do not know. I must find him, but that is easier said than done; either he has given up on practicing magic and thus obscured himself to any magical eye, or he has the gift of hiding better than a mouse in the desert, invisible to both Ringwall and myself. I don’t know which I like less, Hermanis.”

“You know I was never a sorcerer or even a noble myself, Dakh. And even if you didn’t know, then now you do. I was never part of Ringwall, never part of the higher-ups – they turned their noses up at me, arrogant scum. My father was a druid, my mother a timerider. So it all began with a druid breaking the rules and taking the wrong woman. The druids would still have acknowledged me as one of their own, but I didn’t think like them, I didn’t feel like them, and I never wanted to be like them. My secret is this: I never went to Ringwall. Father taught me the powers of magic and all about the energy of the five elements, and Mother showed me how to pass through the flow of time. Unfortunately I never inherited her powers to look through the window of time. I can move freely between past, present and future, but I am half-blind, half-deaf, and mute as only a dead man can be. But who knows what can happen when different magics begin to mingle. And so it’s probably no great surprise to learn that I got to know a shamaness.”

“Yes, the druid in you is clear enough to me, Hermanis,” Dakh said, “and I often wondered, in years past, why you never felt at home in our magic. But now I understand. The magical patterns I have learned to interpret are the images of the here and now, and from them I gather what might happen tomorrow or the day after, or even next winter. But I never dared look too far into the future. Druidism and time-riding are incompatible with each other. Oh, my friend, what a burden you have been given to carry…”

Dakh-Ozz-Han laid an arm around Hermanis’ shoulder and squeezed him tightly. “Be one or the other, my friend, but don’t tear yourself in two trying to be both. And now tell me about this shamaness of yours.”

“Half-shamaness, really. But what is there to tell? She wandered around, never staying at one spot too long, always around the outskirts of the swamp. It was only a matter of time before we met. She still lives around here somewhere. Shouldn’t be too hard to find her, if she wants to be found, that is. Urna, that was her name. I could tell you it was her womanly charm that won me over, but that would be a lie. She attracted men, true enough, but her charm was the least of her gifts. Her eyes burned you and her mouth devoured you. When you were with her you never really knew where you were. I think we spent more time together in the Other World than here. She wasn’t one of my usual adventures.”

Hermanis stopped surprised at the weight of the memories his words conjured up. It took a while before he had steadied himself enough to continue talking about his affair. When he did, there was a smile on his lips.

“Perhaps she was an adventure, Dakh. But if so, then certainly not a short one, and most definitely not the kind others might suspect. Every time I met with her was an adventure, and I did not need to cross the lands of Pentamuria to seek that fine line between life and death. Urna took me with her into the Other World. She was a shamaness, the daughter of a shamaness and her father was a black warlock, she told me. Believe you me, the five elements are almost childish compared to the things possible in the Other World, particularly if you know a thing or two about the ancient magic.”

Dakh’s grip on Hermanis’ arm tightened. “Are you saying there was a magic before the five elements? Impossible. There is only one magic.”

“I can imagine that the druids and the mages of Ringwall don’t like to talk about it. But you druids ought to know better. You know the magic of the Oas.”

Dakh shook his head. “The Oas have…” he begun, only to fall silent again. Had it not been Nill, his friend and problem child, who had tried to tell him something about an ancient magic?

“If you want to know more, ask a black warlock. But black warlocks never grow old. Their magic is too much for their bodies, it burns them sheer up. Or ask a witchdaughter. But they don’t like talking. They know why. Go and find Urna. If she wants you to find her, it’ll be easy. I doubt she’d want to see me again.”

“Was there that much bad blood between you when you separated?” Dakh assumed the worst.

“Bad blood, hrm. There were… decisions to be made. Painful, yes, but for a man in my position, the obvious and only choice. I had my estate, my wife and my sons, my responsibilities here; on the other side I had a wild life of freedom, flitting between this and the Other World. Never certain of whether I was living now or in the past.”

“And you chose security.”

“Not security, old friend. Responsibility.”

“And you told Sedramon all this?”

Hermanis hunched over, his head dropping below his shoulders. “Not all of it…” He stopped. “I’m not a diplomat. At heart, I’m a warrior. What could I have done? Yes, I told Sedramon. I was disappointed. If he wanted to leave Quarrysand behind, then so be it. I wouldn’t stop him. He was his own man. I told him to find his mother. Perhaps she had better answers for him than I. I was honest with him, and I have no regrets.”

“Your mind is reading the words to you, but your heart says something quite different, isn’t it so, Hermanis? What is it that gnaws at your insides, enough to make you go red when you speak of it. What troubles you so? Tell me, Hermanis, that I may tell Sedramon if I ever find him.”

Hermanis threw his arms up in the air as if to summon a legion of air-spirits. Quietly, he said: “When Sedramon left, I called after him to tell his mother than I still think of her, even though she probably doesn’t care. But I never accompanied him to the door, I never gave him the last hug I wish I had. I never gave him my fatherly blessing as honor and tradition would have me do. And now I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know whether he’s still my son.”

*

Sedramon had taken flight from his father’s house in wild haste. There were not many places in Quarrysand where his mother might have lived, and he knew them all. He hurried through the villages around the family estate – often, these were no more than eight or nine huts standing close enough to each other to be counted a village – and asked here and there about an old shamaness, and the mucklings gave answers willingly. Many of them knew him from his childhood, and the younger people, those who had not at some point been a victim to one of his pranks, could not fail to see that Sedramon was visibly noble and gifted in the magical arts.

He finally found his mother in a crag, the sort that used to incite a sense of reckless adventure in him as a child. The entrance was small, and he felt absurdly compelled to suck in his gut to fit through, although he had never reached his father’s size. It widened into a proper cave after a few steps, room enough for two or three people. There was even a smoke-hole in the ceiling; nature had serendipitously decided to let a crack run all the way through the rock there.

“Mother, I am your son,” Sedramon spoke into the half-dark. He could not see anyone, but he felt keenly the presence of a strong aura.

“Come in, and let me get a better look at you, my boy. Tell me your name.”

Sedramon felt a stab of sadness go through his heart. His mother had forgotten his name. He gazed into the shadows, fearing the moment the light came and he would behold an old woman who was no longer entirely of this world.

“Sedramon-Per, Mother. My name is Sedramon-Per.”

“Oh? You think so? Sedramon-Per? Oh well, you’ll find your name soon enough. I don’t know your face. It’s changed, but your aura hasn’t. A flickering like that isn’t likely to be born twice in Pentamuria.”

The voice in the darkness sounded firm, strong and warm, not at all the crazed croak he had expected from an old shamaness.

Sedramon-Per took a few steps forward and made an illumination. “I bring greetings from Hermanis-Per, my father,” he said with all the dignity he could muster.

“Oh, greetings from the old fool, how nice. He is a fool, your father,” the shamaness replied. “He had the magic and restlessness of his father, and the ability to ride through time from his mother, and what does he do? Gets himself made part of the gentry with a huge piece of land to nail him down. He never knew where he belonged. And he’s twice the fool for sending you to Ringwall. I asked him what he meant of it, and he said he knew what he was doing.” She spat to the side. “You have the elements in your blood, son; you are quarter-druid, and the magic of the Other World came to you through me and my mother before me, your other grandmother gave you intimacy with time, and my father passed down his connection to the ancient magic. And with all these gifts your idiot father decided to send you to Ringwall. Ringwall, of all places! Remember this, my son: most mages have never understood more about their magic than a worm knows about the apple he’s living in. The worm thinks the apple’s the whole world, and the mages think they’re the lords over all the apples.” She spat again. “They’re not even the lords over the worms. An apple hangs on a tree, and that tree comes from the earth, and its roots are deep in the soil and rocks and its head in the clouds and the rain. All that is beyond their pathetic little world.”

The shamaness’ voice dripped with contempt that had been nurtured for generations. And yet the hint of a laugh kept squeezing itself between her bitter words. “And about your name, my boy, you have many. But Sedramon-Per is not one of them.”

Sedramon crossed his long arms and legs and sat down opposite his mother. He saw he first as just a jumble of clothes, from which a wild mess of jet-black hair protruded. It was quite unlike his own blond hair. This is supposed to be my mother? he thought, doubt etched in his every sense.

“But you always knew where you belonged, is that it?” Sedramon’s voice was cool and he hoped the authority he laid into his doubt made it sound stronger than he felt. He did not intend to grant his mother insight into the storm of emotion that currently raged inside him as he tried to recognize anything in that jumble of clothes that was in any way connected to him.

The laugh in his mother’s voice grew more pronounced.

“I don’t belong anywhere, child. Shamans are like druids. They wander around, never knowing exactly where they are. Worse than that, even; sometimes, we don’t even know when we are.”

Her laughter reverberated around the steeply sloping walls of the crag, up and down, and Sedramon was surprised to note that it was truly a young woman’s laugh: joyous, challenging, almost impertinent.

“But you, my son, you have such strong roots in the here… you’re not made for wandering around. You’ll find the place you’re looking for some day, and spend the rest of your days wherever Pentamuria’s future lies. And let me tell you, the place you’re going isn’t called Quarrysand.”

She erupted again in a fit of laughter. It took quite some time for her to calm down again. Sedramon repeated her words quietly, searching them for the cause of her mirth. He could not find it.

“You’re the only person I believe could master some magic, rather than pretending like one of those arrogant mages that magical ability makes a master. The master controls and understands magic, becomes part of it until he no longer needs any of it; his world, his life, is nothing else now. To this day,” she smiled, “there has never been a true master of magic. They’ve all vanished into the past, no more than a faint memory. Should you want to meet them, you would have to call them, or find them in the Other World.”

The shamaness had calmed down enough to only be emitting the occasional chuckle.

“But how do you become part of magic?” Sedramon asked. “How would I go about it? I’m not even a real sorcerer. My magical powers do whatever they want with me, not the other way around.” Sedramon was despairing, his formality had long since departed.

“It’s not easy combining as many gifts as you have. You reach mastery by practicing. Use magic wherever you are, whenever you can. Always practice.”

Sedramon gave a short, bitter laugh. “No human has that kind of power. I’d exhaust myself before sundown, and then you’d be one son down.”

“You fool. Who taught you magic, hm? Probably someone with less understanding of it than yourself. Mages, pah! Who says your spells need to be powerful? Who says you need to spend loads of energy on them? What’s important is that you do it all the time, with every gesture, every word; don’t stay stuck on a favorite spell, use all the magical streams equally, go over into the Other World and experiment with different laws: it’s all part of the same magic! I’d also recommend using as much of the ancient magic as possible, but sorcerers these days hardly know it even exists. I don’t know much of it, and your grandfather is no longer with us. He showed it to me, but never deigned to teach. ‘You need to be of the here to know the ancient magic,’ he used to say. ‘You’re too powerless, it would burn you,’ he said. But you’re different. Go and find the ancient magic.

“All the magical arts are surrounded by mysteries. The ancients knew it. It disappeared with them and was lost with the Books of Prophecy. If you rediscover this mystery, understand it and follow it in life, you’ll reach the peak of magic.”

“As is every arcanist’s dream,” Sedramon interjected. “The White mages of Ringwall have been hunting it for centuries.”

“Even more fools. They’ll never discover the mystery. They’re looking in the wrong place.”

“You know it? You know the way?”

She shook her head. After a pause she said: “Come, let me show you what I mean. Hold out your hand.”

Sedramon cautiously obeyed and felt the warm, soft skin of his mother’s hand, which suddenly gave way to an iron vice around his wrist. Before he could say or ask anything, it all went black.

“Where are we?” he asked once he had regained consciousness.

“Look down.”

He noted with surprise that he had his eyes firmly shut. He opened his eyes and saw that he was flying, hand in hand with his mother, across an endless plain. No trees, no bushes broke up the monotonous landscape; only brown, dead earth, gray and black shadows flitting across it.

“All I see are fleeting shades.”

“We’re above the Plain of the Dead. It’s the easiest to reach from our world, because it’s very similar to what we know in the here. Wait a moment.”

The images before his eyes became distorted and warped. The shadows disappeared and returned. But now, Sedramon saw, there were black lumps between dark red spots.

“And this? What is this?”

“Can’t you see?” his mother asked. “We’re flying over a forest.”

“A forest?” His mother was mad. “It’s all black and red and dead. Those aren’t plants, those are rocks and hardship and suffering. What sort of forest is this supposed to be?”

“You’re right, it’s a stone forest. Still, it can be alive. There is no Wood energy in the Other World. You’ll find no green grass or blue blossoms here. That’s all I know, though; I have no idea where we are.”

Sedramon’s stomach lurched uncomfortably. “Are you telling me we’ve lost our way?”

“I don’t know where we are because the laws of space and time we know in our world have no say in matters over here. Our bodies are still safe and sound in the crag where you found me. Your body knows no better and is using your memories to bring you back. In order to take your real body with you, you need long years of practice and experience, because your body can’t enter all the places in the Other World that your spirit can. But it’s an art worth learning. Shamans were always hunted and persecuted, all across the lands. And some who ran and were cornered had no other choice but to leap into the beyond. Not all of them came back. Enough talk. Fly alone, now.”

At these words she relinquished her grip on his wrist and Sedramon lost all sense of direction. Space and time had ceased to exist, and in their place was an omnipresent, muted gray. The stone forest had vanished, the silence hacked at his nerves. He could not see his mother. Sedramon fought against the fear that was rising in his gut like vomit and forced himself to breathe slowly. Without his mother’s guiding strength he seemed to fly much slower. Sedramon decided to land, although he was not entirely certain how to arrange it. But the wish alone seemed enough. His body straightened, the dull gray began to take shape and form contours, and the forest returned. At first it was only spots of red color, but then he saw great strong trees with wide trunks and wider crowns. Where had the Wood energy come from so suddenly? There was a clearing with tall grass, colorful flowers dotting the ground here and there. The leaves stroked his face, but he did not feel them. Branches passed through him as though he was made of water. Sedramon wanted to reach the ground and wondered whether he’d simply sink through the earth, whether he could stand. His flight slowed to a crawl, stuttered—

And the forest exploded. Sedramon shot out of a pillar of flame, beneath him nothing by fire and smoke and ash. The world was afire. The fire shot out of rock faces, ran down sloping mountainsides, tore ridges in half and threw rocks through the air, large enough to crush a town.

As suddenly as the images had come, they dispersed. Sedramon almost cried with relief when he felt the pressure return to his wrist.

“Come, we’re going home. That was enough to begin with.”

Something juddered and shook inside Sedramon’s body and he found himself sitting in the dark crag again, slightly out of breath and shaking like a leaf. He was glad he had remained seated.

“Didn’t you say, Mother, that there is no Wood in the Other World? But we flew through a green forest just before it all turned into burning earth and cracking rocks.”

His mother’s eyes grew to unnatural size in the half-dark and shone so brightly that Sedramon thought wildly of night-hunters.

“What did you see?” she asked shortly, and Sedramon told her of the forest and the fire.

“That was nothing to do with the Other World. You rode the stream of time, you were in the future or the past, but your grandfather can come back to life and take me with him if I know how you did it. I never knew it was possible to mount time from the Other World. But why not? Space and time still exist over there, even if they work a little differently.”

“So it’s only the timeriders who know the future,” Sedramon noted; this knowledge, this gift might help him get through the mage’s tournament unscathed. His mother’s laugh crushed this hope.

“No, they don’t. A timerider can travel to the future, but sometimes fate changes its mind, and the future he saw is irrevocably changed, snuffed out like a campfire nobody bothered to feed.”

The shamaness clicked her fingers and the lights in the crag went out. Sedramon, startled, spoke a few words and conjured a flickering flame.

“Father was never able to ride the time. He told me he was blind and dumb there.”

“Your father never understood the gift he had. All he knew was fighting, and later… I told you he was a fool.”

Irritation rose in Sedramon’s chest. “Why did you bother with him at all then, if you knew what a fool he was?” he asked sharply.

“You don’t understand women. When you’re young, there’s more to be considered than intelligence. Your father was a wild madman. Immensely lovable, but an idiot nonetheless.”

The shamaness laughed again. She suddenly seemed a stranger to Sedramon. He could not imagine his father and this woman as a couple. Something about it seemed fundamentally odd.

“Now go. We might meet again one day. Or not. You have better things to be doing than hanging on your mother’s skirt.”

Sedramon recoiled. He felt hurt and abandoned. He had barely scratched the surface of his mother’s world, even felt a little familiarity, and now he was being discarded like an old boot. It was a bitter feeling he had tasted a little too often.

“Like what, for example?” he snapped.

“Go and learn true control of magic,” his mother said impatiently. “Some day you will have to visit Woodhold, and from there likely continue into the Fire Kingdom. After that, I couldn’t say.”

“Why Woodhold? Why the Fire Kingdom?” Sedramon-Per was confused.

“Those were the images of your future. Or do you think it was the past you visited?”

Sedramon said nothing. What had he seen? The landscapes had been foreign to him. There was no trace of them in his memories. Not in his, nor in his forefathers,’ nor likely in any living person’s. His mother was probably right. The future seemed a lot more plausible than the past.

He rose and made to leave, but his mother suddenly stood before him and embraced him firmly.

“Go with all my good wishes,” she said. “Now get out.”

Sedramon stumbled unevenly out of the cave. He would never understand this woman, his mother. They lived in different worlds.