The Rift War (5 page)

She huddled in on herself, closed her eyes against the darkness, and stuck her fingers in
her ears, but she couldn't block out the sound of the man who laughed and seemed to draw a little
closer with every breath. Sinking deep down inside herself, like Aunt Meggi and Mama and
Grandpapa had taught her, she gathered up all the energy she had. She made a Thread of her
own, to fling it out into the darkness.

Her Thread slapped against the star-metal embedded in the very walls of the tunnel, and
the star-metal that still littered the sea floor, leagues above her, through solid stone and sediment.
It awakened, just before Emmi thought she would run out of air and energy. The bright flash of
power yanked her sideways, through solid stone, into cool, dusty, stale air. The flash sent a
reverberation through stone in every direction, and Edrout let out a roar of surprise that ended
with an audible click. And then silence.

Child-Emmi collapsed on the floor of the tunnel, shivering in her sleeping shift,
exhausted, and surrounded by the soft shimmer of awakened star-metal.

When Mrillis found her, almost a whole day later, she had figured out how to unseal the
bins that held supplies of food and clothes, wrapped in magic to keep them safe and fresh and
secure through the centuries of waiting. She had food and water, and called up light from the
star-metal embedded in the stone around her, but it had been a long, silent wait. She had been
cold despite the fire that finally came after she screamed and ordered it to awake in the firepit.
Emrillian tried to be brave, but it was hard when she saw Grandpapa jump off his lathered horse
and run to her. Tears streaked his face and his arms shook when he gathered her up and held her
close.

"It's all right, Emmi. I'm here. You're not alone."

Mrillis shook her, and that didn't fit with the dream-memory.

Emrillian opened her eyes and found herself back in her adult room in their home on
Moerta's shore. She swallowed and felt the roughness in her throat that meant she had screamed
in her sleep.

"It's all right," Mrillis said, stepping back from her bed, and settled into the chair set
against the wall. "I should have expected a nightmare, after everything we discussed today."

"This is ridiculous." She scrubbed her face with her palms, flinching at the feel of sweat.
Raking her fingers through her hair, she scooted off the bed to fetch the pitcher of ice water she
always took to her room at night. She wanted something far stronger, to warm the ice lodged in
her belly and steady the shaking in her limbs from that ancient terror.

"It is not ridiculous," her grandfather said. "It is an unresolved conflict, and all those
fancy psychology texts will tell you that until your fears are faced or resolved, the nightmares
will continue to torment you."

"Until I face Edrout in battle and destroy him once and for all," she muttered, with the
glass at her lips.

"That lovely suit of armor you made would be totally wasted if you didn't face
him."

She sputtered and put the glass down. Leave it to Mrillis to make a comment like that,
humorous and wry and sensible, all at the same time.

"It's just that I thought I would have a few more years until I had to face him," she said
on a sigh.

"Thank the Estall we made our plans and preparations well in advance of the need.
Despite today's unpleasant surprises, we are ready."

"As ready as we'll ever be." She settled down on the edge of her bed. "I just hope I
wasn't wrong, imagining things, when I made my list of recruits."

Emrillian had sensed touches of magical potential in many of her friends among the
Archaics, when she wore star-metal jewelry to tournaments and meetings. She had a long list of
people she had researched, trying to determine if they had Rey'kil ancestors, or at least Noveni or
Encindi ancestors with known
imbrose
. Unlike Grego's families, who were all wealthy
and powerful and had easily tracked pedigrees, most of the genealogies she tracked for her
friends ended in blanks only a century or two backwards in history.

"The greedy, paranoid men at the Directorate are what worry me the most in all this,"
Mrillis continued, after they sat for several long moments in silence, with the distant sound of
waves crashing against the shore coming through her open window. "Despite all the blockades I
have created through the years, to protect our privacy and our property, they will eventually
invade our home. Using those devices to search for star-metal, they will eventually find the
tunnel. Even with the creatures Edrout has sent into the tunnel in an effort to find and destroy
you... I have confidence for our journey, and for Liris and the others, protected with magic. The
ones who come with modern technology will be little more than naked when magic blocks all
technology."

"No pity for those who are injured in the committing of their crimes," Emrillian
murmured. She almost wished Mrillis would chide her for her uncharitable thoughts, but he just
sighed at her words and they both lapsed into silence again.

She supposed thinking about the imminent journey to Lygroes down the tunnel had
brought on her nightmare. She had been awakened when Edrout had tried to break the magical
barrier keeping him out of the tunnel under the sea, the only weak spot in the dome Mrillis and
Meghianna had created nearly two thousand years ago in Moertan time, but only two hundred
years ago in Lygroes time. If the scientists with whom Grego worked could detect star-metal and
manipulate the energy from it, as he theorized, then they could conceivably break through the
Threads that kept the tunnel mouth hidden, and eventually break through the spells that kept all
intruders out of the tunnel. And eventually they would take that tunnel to Lygroes.

When the modern world with its technology and science met Lygroes, where the people
were essentially crippled in terms of magic, because so much star-metal power went to
maintaining the dome and the time-bending spell... The inhabitants of Lygroes would suffer.
Ancient weaponry and armor and warhorses against modern rockets and vehicles and
explosives?

The land her father had nearly given his life to protect would be as vulnerable as a
newborn baby in a nest of drakags--and the modern world would be just as merciless.

"We have to rouse Quenlaque and the Valors, and awaken my father before the dome
falls," she said quietly.

"We need to defeat Edrout, once and for all, and ensure we can control the lowering of
the dome and the emergence of Lygroes into the modern world," Mrillis said. "We will need all
the magic and all the power we can give our people, which means the dome
must
fall.
Under our terms, not attacked blindly by the Science Directorate's machines. And we cannot take
down the dome until we know Edrout will not be able to join forces with those who come against
us. A battle fought on two fronts is a doomed battle."

"Is my father ready to awaken?"

"We won't know until we travel to the waystop, and step into the Vale of Lanteer."
Mrillis sighed, levered himself out of the chair, and gestured at her bed. "Try to sleep for at least
an hour more."

Emrillian climbed back into bed, even knowing sleep was impossible. She half-dozed,
her mind full of images of her Archaics friends, riding at the head of an army of warriors, facing
the Encindi barbarians who had had two hundred years to rebuild their numbers. Friends who
had trained in warfare for the fun of it would soon be fighting for their lives.

She couldn't do that to them. She wouldn't do that to them. Asking them to stand with
Athrar when he faced the forces of the modern world was one thing. Leading them into death
was something else altogether.

She would have to face Edrout and defeat him before such a battle became necessary, no
matter what it cost her.

* * * *

"Blessed Estall..." Emrillian gazed out over the sea from the top tower of the house.
Even at the darkest part of the night, when the moon had gone below the horizon behind her and
not even a hint of sun waited in the east, the sea was there, a dark gleam and a whispering song.
It struck her in that moment that she might never see this house again. Her
imbrose
bolstered her child's memories of her parents and of Quenlaque and the Stronghold, but not even
magic could keep those memories strong, clear, and real. Tangible. This house where she had
spent the last sixteen years was home, her entire world.

This, she supposed, was something of what her father felt when his split lives were
joined together, and he realized he would never go back to the simple inn in Quenlaque and be
the simple inn boy, Thrarin, ever again.

"Blessed Estall, please, I don't want to be queen. Not in my father's place, not to replace
him. Please, let all my theories be nothing but possibilities. Please, make it so we have thought of
everything and have planned for anything and everything that could happen, so that only the
good happens for us. Please, let my father awaken when we step into the Vale of Lanteer, and let
him take over this war. No, make it so there is no war."

"You know that is not possible," Mrillis said.

How long he had been standing there behind her, listening to her stumbling prayer,
Emrillian had no idea.

"You said faith and obedience require us to hope and to ask for and work for the
impossible. Only by making ourselves pliable tools in the Estall's hands can we change the world
and accomplish miracles."

"Hmm, yes, I did say that. More than once. Graddon advised me--several times," he said
with a soft chuckle, "that by aiming too high for our abilities and resources, we accomplish far
more than we should have, even as we fail."

"I don't plan on failing." She wrapped her arms around herself and turned from the view
of the sea far below.

When she had been a very small child, still unable to comprehend that her parents
wouldn't be coming for her in a few days to take her home, that Aunt Meggi wouldn't come take
her to the Stronghold, that Grandpa Pirkin and Grandma Ynessa wouldn't come for her, that all
she had left in the world was Mrillis, this room had been her refuge. She had stood here, looking
out to sea, believing with all her heart that the tiny sparks of light on the horizon were lanterns on
the shore of Lygroes. And if she looked hard enough, concentrated hard enough, and pulled as
hard as she could with her fledgling
imbrose
, she would bring Lygroes and her missing
family to her, and everything would be right again.

Now, she would be going to Lygroes. To a world that had changed from her memories.
Coming from a world that had changed beyond all comprehension of the people living inside the
dome. Somehow, she would have to reconcile the two worlds. She would have to keep the world
from unraveling when the dome fell and Lygroes hurtled forward into the world she knew of as
the present, when the world of technology and the world of magic met.

"The Estall formed you in your mother's womb for this moment in history." Mrillis
grasped her shoulder with one hand and gently cupped her chin in the other. His eyes held
nothing but sympathy and serenity and love. As always, knowing he was there filled her with
strength, even if his presence couldn't drive away all her fears and doubts and worries.

"I'm selfish," she whispered.

"Hardly." He laughed and wrapped her in his arms.

"I want to be an ordinary girl--well, not entirely ordinary," she said, her words
half-muffled by his shoulder. "I want to go to the Archaics tournament coming up, and I want to
compete and win the flute Trystine made. I want to be proclaimed queen for play, for fun, instead
of fighting for my crown against real Valors and the Encindi and Edrout." She felt a flash of
warm pride that she had spoken his name without stuttering. "I want to meet someone wonderful
and fall in love, and not have to worry about dynastic marriages and politics and power
ploys."

"Ah. Of course." Mrillis released her, grasping her shoulders and holding her out at
arm's length to study her face again. "And who says you cannot fall in love in Lygroes?"

"I have thought hard about this, Grandfather. The wisest plan is to form an alliance
through marriage. Marry the most powerful man among the Valors, to bind his allies to my
father's cause. I will need his support, if not his help and counsel, when I seek the
Zygradon."

"Thoroughly logical."

"What is that smile for?"

"Am I smiling?" He released her and gestured at the circular staircase. "The time has
come. Are you all packed?"

"My gear is at the stables. All that is left is to saddle my horse and load the pack horses."
She spread her arms and turned around once, making her short riding cloak swirl out around her.
She wore light traveling armor, chain mail over supple leather, with simple tunic and leggings
underneath that. Strands of star-metal had been woven through the chain mail to give it strength
and more protection than it would normally offer. Riding gloves were tucked into her belt. Her
two swords, bow, and quiver of arrows waited with her gear in the stables. She wore a long knife
at her belt and had two throwing knives tucked into the outer sheaths of her boots.

"You are prepared, you are ready, and you have no illusions about superiority." Mrillis
nodded for punctuation. "You make me proud, and you will make your parents proud. I have no
fears."

"Good, because I have enough fears for both of us." She allowed a tiny, crooked smile
when Mrillis sighed, hooked his arm through hers and led her down the staircase. "You still
haven't told me what that smile was for, Grandfather. When I mentioned a marriage
alliance."

"Ah, yes. I was just remembering that Lycen and Ilianora had hoped you would marry
Garad when you two grew up."

"I remember him. I adored him."

"His grandson holds the throne now. And as Regent for the Warhawk, he is the most
powerful man among the Valors of Quenlaque."