“What I said before…” He shakes his head swiftly. “You must know, I did not mean…”
“I know exactly what you meant, Pendefyre.” My voice wobbles. I steady it, along with my shoulders. “Without me around, you might have seen the Reaver disaster coming and moved to prevent it. You cannot forgive yourself for letting me into your heart—not at the sake of your beloved self-possession.” My ragged inhale is rife with pain. “More, you cannot forgive me. For it was on me that Efnysien set his sights that night. It was me who spurred him into action. I am the spark that lit the fire…and now your home is naught but ashes.”
He pales as I speak the words, but he does not contradict them.
Lightning flashes again, splitting the sky. Thunder booms a ferocious response. I can no longer tell if the wetness of my cheeks is from the rain or my own grief.
Reaching out, I bring my palm down on the sharp edge ofone of the slate rocks. Blood spurts with a sudden slice of pain. It drips down the lengths of my fingers as I lift them into the middle of the archway. The portal activates instantly, a flood of pure daylight emanating from it. Tendrils of maegic reach out toward me, urging me forward. I resist for a moment—just long enough to glance back at Penn.
He is stock-still, watching me. His hair is plastered against his head, his saturated clothing steaming faintly as his immense body heat evaporates the cold water that continues to cascade from the clouds.
“Don’t follow me,” I tell him in a choked voice.
Then, I step through.
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 myexit. 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 arehunted 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?