When the cloud plunged down on him, he could only scream.
Karigan swatted at hummingbirds with the flat of her swordblade. Cade pulled one out that had lodged in his arm. Lhean struck and caught one out of mid-air, but others circled around and hovered over them. Karigan’s leg buckled when a beak impaled her behind her knee. She cried out in pain and yanked the bird out, its feathers greasy with her own blood. She staggered to her feet and tried to brush several off Cade.
“Vien a muna’riel!” Lhean suddenly shouted.
The shock of silver light spread to every corner of the chamber and sent the hummingbirds spiraling away through dust and debris into the other exhibition hall.
The three stood there silently, breathing hard, and blinking in the intense light.
“How did you—?” Karigan began.
“I remembered how in Blackveil, Telagioth commanded the lumeni along the Lighted Path to illuminate,” Lhean replied.
“It scared the birds off,” Cade said. “The light.”
Karigan squinted toward the display case that held Silk’s collection of moonstones, but it was too bright to look at directly. Was hers, she wondered again, among them, or locked away in Silk’s office, or . . . ?
“Do you not see, Galadheon?” Lhean asked. “We’ve our silver moonlight to reach a piece of time. You but need to lead us across the liminal line.”
Could it be true? Was this enough to send them home to their own time?
She glanced at Cade. “Do you really want to do this—go to my Sacoridia?”
“More than anything.”
Karigan smiled, but tried to contain her excitement. After all, this might not work, and she’d be stuck here for the rest of her life. The rumbling and shaking of the palace made her think that the rest of her life might not be that long.
Lhean re-positioned her so now, with the brilliant silver light of the moonstones knifing past them, her shadow crossed the phase she assumed to be the ice-glazed moon. The three of them linked arms, Karigan in the middle.
“Call upon your ability,” Lhean said, “so we may cross the threshold.”
Karigan took a deep breath, and even as the palace was racked by more quaking and glass panels shattered on the floor around them, she grasped her brooch and faded. All went gray. Along with the noise of destruction, she heard the grinding of the winged statues rotating until they gazed down upon her, Cade, and Lhean.
The crossing of this threshold stretched her, threatened to tear her apart. To one side, the side Lhean clung to, she sensed a summer night’s breath of air, fresh and alive and familiar—home! To her other side, Cade’s side, was a maelstrom, devastation, the future she was attempting to escape.
Lhean hauled on her, but she could not move. She was anchored. Her sword slipped from her grip and arrowed back into the future. Her bonewood vanished, too, but into the past. Cade’s hold on her threatened to yank her arm out of its socket. He was wavery in her vision and was in danger of being sucked into chaos like her sword had been.
No! She tried pulling harder on him, but she only edged closer toward chaos herself.
“Galadheon!” Lhean pulled back on her, her shoulders being wrenched out by opposing forces.
“Karigan!” Cade shouted, his voice distant. “You must go home.”
“Not without you! I will not leave you!”
“I am holding you back—I am not allowed to cross.”
“No! I won’t—”
“Karigan,” he said, “I love you.” He let her go. He fell back into the maelstrom and vanished.
“Nooo!” she wailed and reached after him, but Lhean held on to her. “Let me go! Let me go!”
“No, Galadheon. He would no longer remember you.”
Lhean drew her back toward the familiar, the chirruping of crickets, the embrace of a summer evening, a cobblestone street underfoot, a familiar series of rooflines: the city that was no longer Gossham, but Corsa. Home. She breathed deep of it.
But before she could even drop her fading, she was grabbed again, torn from Lhean’s grasp, from her world, and hurled into the heavens, among the stars, the planets, undulating masses of celestial clouds. She spun out of control, catching glimpses of tiny silver shards that glinted in starlight and pursued her like a comet’s tail.
Why? What had it all been for?
The spinning eased, and as she traveled, she thought she saw a crystalline staircase, a lone warrior standing on the landing, with her sword at rest. Forms vast and filmy moved about the heavens—celestial hunting dogs, great eagles, winged horses. Gods strode across the stars.
She plunged. She was falling, falling, the silver shards changing course to follow as though she and they were inextricably linked. She remembered the silent laughter of the mirror man. She’d been presented three masks, had been forced to choose. She had rejected the three and chosen his. He had called her bluff.
She fell at a great velocity, stars streaking by. The sound of immense wings sweeping the air came to her, and he caught her once again, Westrion, the Birdman, god of death. He cradled her to his chest as he had before, slowing her descent. The mirror shards slowed with them.
“Why?” she asked him. “Why do you do this to me?”
His raptor’s visage remained impassive as one word thundered in her mind: AVATAR. Then he flung her away, and she hurtled from the heavens and into the world.
THE LONGEST NIGHT
It was the winter solstice. Night of Aeryc. Despite the lively music echoing through the banquet hall, and festive boughs of evergreens adorning the rafters and great hearth, the mood was subdued among the guests who feasted with King Zachary and Queen Estora.