Chapter 2: All Roads to Nowhere

       Eden had slinked off while Seije, Arden, and Solis had set about loading the car.  She had insisted that Solis not avoid them and she made him promise not to hold any more secrets from her. 

       Bendruil itself was on a lower part of the neck of the continent at a low elevation so there were no gusty winds here.  Eden enjoyed the peace where she sat on the cliff that dropped to the ocean below and when she heard a crunching behind her, she didn’t bother turning.  They were watching her like a hawk, as much as they pretended they weren’t, so it would only be one of them.

       It was Arden that sat down beside her and took her gloved hand in his.

       “Arden…” Eden acknowledged, unsure of what more to say.  Even though she thought of him as an uncle too, he thought the uncle title made him feel old, so she never used it with him.  He squeezed her hand and she hoped he wasn’t here to lecture her.

       “Do you remember the Top of the World? The Diviners’ village?” Arden asked her now.  She smiled faintly.

       “Not well.  It’s been… 14 years?” Eden asked, shocked that so much time had passed.  She had been four years old when they made that journey.  She had just met Uncle Melchior and learned that magic still existed.  They had gone to look for answers.  They had said they didn’t find anything, but now that she was older, she wondered if they had just kept that from her too.

       “Yes… 14 years…” Arden echoed, his voice drifting off.  His beautiful hair was blowing lightly with a breeze.

       “Can I braid your hair?” Eden asked, an impulsive request but he smiled and reached into a small pouch on his belt and handed her a hair tie, swinging around so she could.  It was a small thing, but it touched her heart—he had started carrying a hair tie in that pouch since she was very little, for that very reason.  That he still did when she hadn’t asked in years had meant more than she had imagined.

       “Does… Uncle Seije still have the book?” Eden asked as she finger combed his hair to separate it for the braid.  She blushed, thinking of how once she told herself that touching Arden’s hair was better than touching skin.  Now that she had felt Solis’s skin on hers, she had to amend that.

       “He would never lose that thing,” Arden replied.  Eden nodded even though he couldn’t see it.

       “Does he talk to you about it?” Eden wondered.

       Arden kept quiet for a moment and she thought he wouldn’t say more, but he sighed softly.

       “You know it’s a sort of… mystical book already.  It started off just a regular book, one that Krose started writing after the Goddess had taken over, always intending to give it to your mother.  He had loved her from the time he met her and wanted to be sure she could keep the truth for herself.  Before he gave it to her, the Goddess had given it a power—to keep writing Rienna’s story.  For a long time, it did just that, but…  Seije said when the Goddess slept, the words would stop sometimes too, or fill in quickly or… they started to become garbled and stopped writing her story.  The Goddess’s own thoughts were filling the pages and going away and Seije had feared that Viper had somehow infected her.  The Goddess would call him her “lost love” and talk about “being sure her secrets were kept…

       “Seije had known the minute that the cottage had been flooded that his suspicions were true and the Goddess was moving.  He didn’t want to take you north right away because he didn’t want to attract attention and he wanted to look into what became of Melchior and your mother.  If they lived, he needed to know what to do.  The book only really hinted that the Goddess was mysteriously unable to travel north of Nocturna.  There was some sort of old barrier made long ago that kept the old gods from finding the Diviners and that restriction had passed to her,” Arden explained.

       “Why would the Diviners want to keep the old gods away?  Did they not have the blood of the gods in them as well?” Eden asked.  Her books had never hinted at any such restriction.

       “It wasn’t the blood, but the elemental magic they had successfully blocked, maybe something older, considering the source.  It was why the old gods had tried to rid themselves of it, only the act of making the elementals did not give them the freedom they had hoped and it had only caused them to sleep,” Arden told her and Eden nodded again.  It made sense now, only it didn’t tell her why.

       “As for why…  no one seems to know for sure.  They think that the gods were trying to breed with their own children to perfect a race that would enable them to transcend the limitations the originals had imposed upon them.  The Diviners feared that the old gods would simply take their bodies once they did.  The Diviners had been able to use the wild magic to further limit them, but it meant that they had to protect their secrets.  It was why Lyria’s mother had such a hard time leaving with her daughter.  They believed that anyone passing through the barrier would break it, but that was superstition.  Lyria ended up being instrumental in the destruction of the old gods and the end of their curse,” Arden supplied.

       Eden had finished the braid and pushed him to signal she was done and he turned to sit beside her again.

       “Yet the Goddess was still not able to travel north.  Even when their powers disappeared…” Eden added.

       “Yes, and we know why now—it didn’t include wild magic.  It is possible the Goddess has discovered what the old gods wanted so badly and it had made her desperate,” Arden said.

       “Something that means she has to kill everyone who knows about her, their children, dissolve wild magic…  and something the Diviners don’t know about or protect religiously,” Eden whispered.  Arden nodded this time and grabbed her hand again.

       “Do you feel better knowing?” Arden asked her now.  Eden’s face fell and he regretted saying anything.

       “No…  I was so sure I would, but to be honest, I just want to be free of magic and find a place to call home again.  None of it has been worth the ones lost…” Eden confessed.

       Caius appearing startled Eden into hugging Arden.  She magically threw snow in his face to show her displeasure, but Caius laughed.  He had changed a lot since he started traveling with them.

       “Sorry for the scare, Eden.  I’m moving on to the Top of the World ahead of you, seeing what I can find before you get there,” Caius said, wiping the snow off of him.

       “You’re not traveling with Hope and Tia?” Eden asked.

       Caius shook his head.

       “Rowan is with them now, so it’s a crowd,” Caius informed her.  Eden sprung to her feet.

       “Rowan?  What about Elm and Birch?” Eden asked, excited.

       Caius’s face closed off.

       “No.  I couldn’t save them.  The Goddess found them,” he told her quietly.  He had to grab her upper arms to steady her.

       “Stay on guard, okay?  She may not be able to reach you here, but I have no doubt she has others on your trail,” Caius warned.  Eden touched his arm with concern.

       “She killed them…  Do you think she might have had something to do with the white wolves that attacked us twice already?” Eden asked. 

       Caius frowned.

       “It is possible.  But she is capable of so much more.  Your mother wouldn’t have told you about it but… her and your father Ashe had discovered a place called Calderon where they found unicorns.  When the gods were annihilated they had summoned Melchior to free them and to do so she had taken one, a young male named Osharus to stay by her side.  He was the one that almost killed Rowan.  He was…  corrupted by whatever seems to have changed the Goddess,” Caius explained and Eden shook her head now.

       “No…  I do know about Calderon.  Not because my mother told me but I had found one of her journals before.  I know about Krose and my father and… and Arden and then Melchior too.  She wouldn’t write about the first one though, just that the catalyst for her journey became the bane of her womb.  Makes sense now that I know what Erised did…”

       Eden had been the only child her mother could have.  Her womb had been destroyed, only protected enough to bear her before it was sterile.  She had always envied the others for having other siblings.  Tia had Darien, Solis had his twin sisters, Conor and Calyra had each other, Hope had four brothers.  Her heart sank now. Had.  It wasn’t enough that she lost Reese, but she lost two of the triplets too. 

       Arden had become somber, shocked that Eden had known about the affair he had with her mother.

       “Wait, you said Rowan was almost killed by Osharus?  Does that mean they are delayed?” Eden asked now.

       Caius shook his head but released Eden now that she seemed steady.

       “No, Tia was able to heal him when I…  When I went to report back to Dinsch,” Caius said.  It wasn’t like him to hesitate, but he seemed shaken by the incident.  From the looks of it, it wasn’t the first time he had to tell Dinsch bad news.  Eden grabbed his hand now and patted it.

       “I know you probably have a lot to do, so I won’t keep you.  Be safe, Caius,” Eden said softly and touched his cheek.  He leaned into it, smiling, and disappeared again.

Eden hung her head and stayed quiet, hearing Arden shift uncomfortably behind her.

       “I didn’t know you knew about… your mother and I,” Arden finally said.

       Eden turned around to look at his face and smiled, shrugging.

       “I might never have brought it up.  It’s pretty embarrassing admitting I read my mother’s intimate journals for any clue of the things she hid from me.  I expected to learn that maybe he wasn’t the great man she made him out to be, instead I… I found my mother was a girl who had to make a lot of hard choices…  She loved each of you no less than the other, but Melchior… he is really something, isn’t he?  I wonder if Solis can be that man for me…” Eden shyly wondered.  Arden lifted her chin with his gloved hand and smiled.

       “He already is.  Time…  time is the tricky part.  A lot can happen that can change plans.  Your mom… she was always conflicted by both good memories and harsh realities,” Arden said, looking boyish with the struggle to explain.  Eden reached out and touched his arm now.

       “You don’t need to defend her, Arden.  I love my mother and I know she always did what she thought was best.  She did all she could to protect me but fate had had other plans for me too,” Eden reassured and Arden looked relieved.  She heard more shuffling and Solis joined them now.  Eden’s cheeks flushed with the flutter of her heart.

       “We’re ready to go.  Are you okay, Eden?  I thought I saw Caius here,” Solis asked now, pulling her into a hug.

       “Mmm, yeah, it’s… it’s okay.  We can talk in the car,” Eden said, lifting her head to smile up at him.  He kissed the tip of her nose and pulled her towards where Seije waited with his usual stern impatience intact.

 

       Caius hadn’t told Tia he was leaving and it had angered her at first.  Once that simmered and cooled, she just missed him.  He had done little but agitate her, always insisting on talking to her when she wished he would just shut-up.  She would be rough with him and he would smooth away the edges. She could admit that maybe she was trying to make him less than what Reese was to her, but he had easily dismissed the attempt and carried on like he usually did—with cryptic outbursts and strange purpose.  She was always used to being the aggressor but Caius took as well as he gave and it confused her.

       Pillow talk was just as weird with him.  He had wanted her to talk to him about her parents and Darien.  Again, with Reese, she had just hoped he wouldn’t want to talk at all—with Caius, that anxiety sobered into something else.  It had stabbed at her that with all of the things that happened, she had barely thought of them at all.  She had tried to be curt and abrupt but he would be more specific: what did you like to do for fun with Darien?  Did you get your temper from your mother? How was your father overprotective? He didn’t just want to know her, he studied her.  He remembered things she liked in bed (or whatever surface they screwed on) and would do them better next time.  He had tried to serenade her with her lute a time or two and she had gotten angry and embarrassed at the gesture.  He had teased her then and made up songs about lust and what he wanted to do with her body instead while she chased him (both of them completely naked) trying to snatch the lute back.  He would let her catch him but he would have his way with her.  She had been annoyed at every turn but now it was a heavy absence knowing he would be away from her for a while.

       Tia had asked Hope why she didn’t just go on ahead too, but she knew better; Hope would never leave Bullet and her one remaining brother behind.  It had been a hard blow for her when she saw the two of them together and thought this is all that is left of Dinsch’s children.  They had been a lively bunch, reduced to this in so little time.

       Despite the fact that Arred had assured them that Tia’s stars had healed Rowan as well as he could have done, Hope had insisted they stay another night just to make sure he could make the trip.  Tia had let her fuss over him on her own, just checked in from time to time and when night came, she had snuck out onto the roof and called her stars to watch them hover surreally in front of the ones so far away.  She sprawled out on her back, her ankles linked and her hands behind her head.  With a heavy sigh, she wondered where Caius was now.

       She had lingered in her thoughts for a while and it took a heavy thump off to her left to startle her from them.  She recognized the form in the moonlight but she knew something was wrong right away.  Cylar was slumped forward on his feet, thick slow trails of blood flowing from those black eyes.  He shambled forward gracelessly and Tia had scrambled to her feet in a panic.

       “Cylar, what has happened to you?” Tia gasped, terrified.

       A slow sinister grin spread too-wide over his once handsome face and he lunged forward with unnatural speed.  She had managed to clear his path and roll to her feet when she noticed the skin and muscle of his back was completely torn away and his spinal cord, still suspended in the gory cavity was bypassed with a series of wires and flashing red lights.  He was being controlled or kept alive with the grotesque rigging.  When he flapped his still-functional wings, she could see the stretch of the exposed muscles that remained and stumbled back, sick with nausea.

       Cylar spun around slowly again and that smile twitched like the legs of a dying insect.

       “Who did this to you?” Tia gasped, her sympathy tainted with the intensity of her fear.

       “First you, then Hope.  Die!” came the rattle of his gurgling voice, blood spurting out as he tried to use what little remained of his body.

       He caught her arm this time and pushed her backwards until they hit the fence enclosure behind her and slammed her back against it. She cried out in pain and dread as his mouth came towards her, coughing blood along her jaw and neck as he bent to bite her throat.

       Her stars had not left her this whole time and, sensing the immediate danger to her, they shot forward.  The first tore off Cylar’s jawbone and his tongue hung thickly like raw steak slapping down onto his chest.  They zipped through him like a meteor shower, shredding him bit by bit although his hand still held her arm in a vice.  She peeled it away in revulsion and when Cylar was little more than a pile of meat, she sobbed deeply and ran for her room, knocking into walls as her wobbly legs struggled to carry her while she shook with the trauma.

       When she burst into her room, Hope had shot up to her feet (Rowan had tried to sit up too, but Hope had shoved him back down).

       “Tia, by the gods, what happened?” Hope exclaimed, seeing the thick black blood adorning her like a macabre necklace.  Tia trembled and fell against Hope.  Hope helped her to the bathroom and set her on the privy’s lid while she fiddled with the shower knobs.  She didn’t bother to undress Tia just picked her up again and held her under the spray.  As Tia’s terror dissipated, she started to stand on the strength of her own feet.

       “It was Cylar…  I think the Goddess sent him.  He was… he was bypassed somehow, his spinal cord, you know, like you do when you’re rewiring Bullet, with the clips on the end of wires,” Tia babbled on, trying to make sense of it.

       “Cylar…” Hope said sadly.  Tia knew Hope had really liked Cylar, maybe even entertained returning to him once things had blown over, and Tia regretted that she had to be the one to tell her.

       “It was awful, Hope, but… the stars took care of him.  His suffering is over at least, if that’s any consolation,” Tia winced.  It wasn’t the first time her stars had killed someone Hope cared about.  Hope nodded numbly, her smile sad as she stripped and helped Tia out of her clothes, grabbing towels for them both.

       “Damn, I didn’t think to bring my clothes into your room,” Hope said softly.

       Tia had a warm travel dress that Hope could take and said as much.  Hope went out to the main room and grabbed it, along with clothes for Tia and they dressed in silence.

       “Would you… mind looking after Rowan for a bit?” Hope asked absently.

       “Of course I wouldn’t mind.  Hope, please…  don’t go up there.  It’s horrible,” Tia reiterated, her eyes haunted with the recent memory.

       Hope nodded and touched Tia’s arm for reassurance and shuffled out of the room in a sort of trance.

       Rowan’s lips were pursed together when she came back out to sit with him.

       “I wish I could do more for you than just sit here,” Rowan confessed, his voice bitter with his invalid status.

       Tia patted his hand, keeping hers over it.

       “It’s enough.  I’m…  I’m so glad you’re alive, Rowan,” Tia said, tears springing to her eyes with relief and anxiety.

       “Tia, don’t blame yourself.  For any of this.  Do you think Reese or Cylar or anyone else didn’t know the danger they were in by helping you?  Yes, I…  I wanted to be mad at you.  When I saw what happened to Birch, knowing Elm might have suffered worse…  Maybe that was what it finally took to take all this seriously.  My brothers paid the price for our arrogance and I… I feel so guilty that I got to survive that when I was no less stupid that they were,” Rowan admitted.  “You said goodbye to Reese at least, right?  It sounds like he really loved you.  Whatever you’ve got with Caius now?  Don’t fight it.  If we didn’t know it before, it’s clear now that we might not have second chances to make things right.”

       He was right and Tia just nodded.  It was what plagued her, that she had spent so much time digging at Caius rather than being grateful for the distraction.  She cursed herself for it, hating that she would repeat mistakes as if there were so much room to keep screwing things up.  She squeezed Rowan’s hand now.

       “Whatever happens, protect Hope.  Keep an eye on her,” Tia started, in all seriousness.

       Rowan laughed shortly.

       “One is all I’ve got,” Rowan reminded her and she blushed, but he smirked and waited for her to go on.

       “She has her… demons under control now, but there’s no telling what that magic will do to her.  The darkness        has swallowed more than its share and Hope… Hope is a person this world needs,” Tia said gently.

       “I know, Tia.  Don’t be so quick to sell yourself short.  The world needs you too,” Rowan reassured her.

       “It doesn’t.  Not really.  Pretty to think so, but I’ve learned that sometimes we have to let go of our ego to find our purpose,” Tia argued.

       “It doesn’t make people less valuable.  Elm and Birch…  No one will remember them, but someone loved them.  It’s possible that the Goddess will get her way and no one will be remembered.  Dying for a cause, maybe that means your name is repeated, but how can you spend your life only wanting to be a name, a story, on the lips of strangers?” Rowan asked and Tia hesitated, thinking of what to say.

       “I know what you mean… You’re right.  Yet, that’s not what the Heroes set out to do, not what our fathers intended.  They were prepared to sacrifice for the greater good.  I want to believe that I can do the same,” Tia finally said.

 

       Verity had begged Finn not to leave, that they should remain vigilant—even though the Goddess could get to others to break through the wards, it was still the safest place to be.  He told Verity he couldn’t risk it—he had to travel north as well and warn the others.  Caius would never risk coming back to Skyloft so that option was out.  Dinsch had sent word that Caius would not go there any longer either—she had already killed two of Dinsch’s triplets, maiming the third.  The Goddess would not be looking for him and once he was past Nocturna, her reach was limited to whatever could pass through. 

       It was possible that if what she was after was an object that any one of these servants could find it and bring it back to her.  Maybe even if it were a location, her servants might know how to dissolve the wards that held her from the north.  Either way, he had to be the one to do it.  Taking anyone else with him might be safer, but traveling alone would both be faster and stealthier.

       Verity knew it was useless to argue and prepared to send him off with a dreaded reluctance in her heart.

       “Finn… so many times, we have been lucky to survive terrible things.  We were protected by magic, by the Mother, by the Goddess, but now we are on our own.  Don’t leave me a widow.  Our children have Arred and their friends and wild magic to boot.  We have to pass the torch and trust they will overcome,” Verity pleaded with him.         “I know I can’t convince you to stay, but don’t do anything rash.”

       Finn kissed his wife, made love to her slowly and with all the passion in his heart for her, and slipped off into the night.  He would fly most of the way since it was quicker, armed only with a spear and a coin purse.

 

       Despite Fenec’s insistence that Reylon didn’t need to make a show of their relationship, he did just that—flirtations, holding hands, stolen kisses, as they sat in the back with Calyra.  It did not escape Fenec’s attention that Calyra was actually reassured by his diverted interest and his annoyance faded once he realized he had done it was much for Calyra’s sake as his.

       Calyra sat diagonal from Arred as he drove once more and enjoyed the looks he sent her, but Conor was once more lost in thought.

       Conor had done well to keep what troubled him quiet.  For such a dangerous journey, they had gone some time with relatively little danger and while that was a good thing, it was also an unsettling one.  Just as the Ravens had attacked on the way to Nocturna, it was possible that the Goddess had more subordinates or at least more ways to get around her restrictions from moving in the north.  At this point, even the Keepers had no actual idea of what lie in the north that the Goddess wanted nor what she truly intended to do with it.  They knew she was corrupted and it was possible that she wanted the thing that could purify her and restore order, but the exact opposite could be true.  No matter what he came up with, it became obvious that they could not let the Goddess have it.  This was not a world that needed gods or goddesses any longer.  It didn’t need magic and it was time humanity changed its own course.

       In recent history there had never been dictatorial kings or queens, but royalty also had not enjoyed long life spans either.  Over the past few decades, the old gods and elementals had reached the peak of destruction, but long before then they had taken to meddling with the balance.  Humans had not needed to do much subjugating when the elementals saw any rise of power in humans to be a personal affront and had taken care of it.  Viper had been as close to a dictator as any, but his madness had extended to using the entire city he took over as fleshy puppets to hide his machines of destruction.  Who needed kings when you have psychos like these?

Arred seemed to take notice of Conor off in his thoughts.

 

 

       “Missing Hope?” Arred asked and Conor looked stunned.  Of all the things on his mind, he found it odd that Arred had even noticed how Hope had gotten tangled up in his mind.  It wasn’t what he was thinking of, but it was no less shocking.

       “How…?” Conor started, but couldn’t manage to force out more through his words of wind. 

       Arred smiled and focused back on where he drove.

       “I saw you flying with her before we left.  I asked her about it and she got really cute and shy about it,” Arred explained.

       “You talked to Hope, Arred?” Calyra asked now.  Neither Conor nor Arred had intentionally kept it from Calyra, but neither incident had been need-to-know.  Conor had gotten a lesson in caring for their vehicle while Arred…

       “Yes, she came to ask me if I could heal Rowan…” Arred said, his voice drifting off.

T       hey told Calyra (and Fenec and Reylon by proxy) about Hope’s visits and while she wasn’t angry, she fell quiet.  When she did speak, she sounded far off.

       “You and Hope…  I think she’s good for you.  You seem to come out of your funk more when she’s around,” Calyra told him.  Conor spun to face her.

       “There’s isn’t really anything going on between us!” Conor protested.

       “Not with that attitude…” Calyra shot back, smiling sweetly.  Conor rolled his eyes and faced forward again.

       “Shit!” Arred suddenly exclaimed as he slammed on the brakes, the car starting to spin out as he did.  They hit a bump before the car pitched forward into a ditch with a crunch.  Conor was flung through the windshield and the others were disoriented.  Calyra noticed Conor was gone first and slammed her shoulder into her door, stumbling out, the gash on her head making her dizzy and she vomited before going towards her brother’s body, unconscious or dead twenty feet away.

       “Arred!” Calyra screamed, which made her get sick again and she saw Arred had rushed to Conor ahead of her and knelt beside him.  Fenec and Reylon were shaken up but otherwise okay.

       “Is he… is he?” Calyra whimpered as Arred felt for a pulse.  She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘dead.’ Calyra crumpled to her knees with relief as Arred shook his head.

       “No, but I have to work fast,” Arred said, laying his hands on him.  His body was broken in several places, his neck shattered on the impact, his wings shredded deep in several places.  A faint green glow pulsed through him into Conor as he mended before their eyes.  When his eyes fluttered open, Calyra gasped and her choking sobs burst out.         Arred picked Conor up, who was still weak.

       “Get away from the car, I can smell the fuel leaking,” Arred told the rest of them as they walk away.

       Calyra noticed a strange clicking sound coming from the car.

       “No, I can’t leave it…” Calyra said and rushed back to the car.

       “Calyra!” Arred barked, but she ignored him and went back.  She reached into the car and snatched up her bow and quiver then hurried away, barely missing being caught in the explosion.  Arred’s face was suddenly in front of hers, a strange angry expression on his face.  Strange because he was never the type to be angry.

       “Damn it, Calyra, I can make another bow!  You could’ve been killed!” Arred said, shaking her lightly.  Her head rolled back with nausea and his eyes glowed again as he healed her head injury and pulled her into his arms.         “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to scare you.  I don’t want to lose you…”

       “I don’t want another bow, you big idiot…  I want the one that made me fight harder against what I felt for you.  The one that made me lose that battle,” Calyra said, touching his cheek and his eyes softened their scorn.  “And I haven’t seen a tree since before High Loft.  We’ll need this if we have to travel on foot.  We’ll have to hunt to eat.”

       “And of course none of us can teleport to tell the others,” Fenec pointed out, holding up a weak-looking Reylon.

Arred stood up, towering over Calyra, concern on his face.

       “Do I need to heal either of you?” Arred asked approaching them anyway.  He closed his eyes as he touched their shoulders and opened them with the green glow shining again.  “Internal bleeding, Reylon.  A slow way to die.  Fenec, frighteningly unharmed as usual.”

       “I’m the one with unbreakable skin too,” Reylon whined as he straightened up, feeling better.  “At least I know better now.”

       “What will we do for shelter?” came Conor’s croaking voice.  Calyra was so relieved to hear he could talk again that she ran over and wrapped her arms around him.

       Arred was the one to answer.

       “Eden would be able to do it quicker, but as long as Calyra can create a dome it will freeze into shape to make an ice tent.” 

       Calyra nodded that she could do that.

       “Couldn’t Reylon just reform the car to fix it?” Calyra asked, but Reylon was shaking his head.

       “The outside, yes, but what was under the hood is outside my knowledge and the fuel has burned off in the explosion,” Reylon regretfully told her.  Calyra noticed at least that all of them (aside from Conor) still wore their weapons, which was better than nothing.  Reylon’s metal shaping might still come in handy.  She could only hope that maybe Hope or Caius might come looking for them and offer a solution.  It was a cold journey and, even in their furs, they’d be exposed to the elements and attract attention on foot.  Calyra lamented that the feathers their father had given them were gone but Calyra could use her own for Conor’s hair now.  The ones he wore now were split and speckled in blood from his injury and she regretted she would have to fix that.  Other than her bow and their belts, they had nothing left of home.

 

       Cartedis was the actual name of the Top of the World, the Diviner’s village, but the mainlanders rarely made the journey and it was never said around outsiders.  Merchant caravans would only go so far maybe twice a year if that and since Lyria and her mother (Cela) had escaped, merchants from then on had to be carefully inspected on entering and leaving. 

       Korus, the Shadow (a soft term for assassin), had traveled for over a decade before he found where Cela had gone and made her death look natural.  He was not entirely a cold-blooded man and her child knew nothing of the Diviners so he had let Lyria live.  Before the magic had disappeared, Korus was able to see into minds without the curse of Touch like Lyria had. It was best that she stayed in Stoneweld—if she ever set foot on Vieres and the Diviners knew, he would have to kill her.  He knew when Lyria died, could feel her flame go out.  Not all of the Diviners’ abilities were tied to their genes and Korus had a strange sort of wild magic himself, one that tied his awareness to all who carried the blood of the gods in their veins.  Stronger still because Cela had been his lover and Lyria was his daughter.

       He had failed them once when the elders decided the child could not live, that she was weak.  He hadn’t known then it was not weakness and they had feared her.  Her mind had been closed to them, but not to Korus.  Lyria was an infant and did not think in words, but he saw his child had a healthy mind and still did nothing to stop their sentence.  As a Shadow, he was never supposed to be with a woman.  The elders thought an assassin was a bad omen but a necessary evil.  Cela had kept his secret and escaped with the child.  He had been glad until he was sent to kill them.

       It should have been a quick kill—he moved faster than they did and there weren’t many routes a merchant would go in the north.  In truth, he just tracked them for a while, learned they were leaving Vieres and was relieved.  It wasn’t enough for the paranoid elders and when he returned he had been tortured for failure before he was sent off again to pursue them.  Stoneweld was a vast continent so he hadn’t dawdled in tracking them this time.  There were nomadic camps all over and people did not have loose tongues in this harsher land.

       When Korus found them, he meant to end it quick and return but seeing his daughter, blossoming and beautiful, he had changed his plans.  He could not spare the woman he once loved; the elders would find out and he would die for the deception.  No one knew what Lyria looked like or if the so-called sickly child had even survived.  He had poisoned Cela and kissed her forehead as she died, whispering that he would spare their daughter and she had gone in peace after that.

       In a perfect world, he would have protected Cela and Lyria, would have never gone back to Cartedis himself.  Other Shadows would be sent; they would never be safe.  In the end, he knew a Shadow was all he would ever be and he did the best thing he could do and spared the girl.  Not that he had had a choice.  One of his own had caught up to him, tried to kill him, and powers beyond his own had intervened.  It was a memory he was happy to forget, but he was glad Lyria would be safe at least.

       It was now years later, years after Lyria’s light went out, and he thought about her now when the strange young man Caius appeared in front of him.

       “Lord Korus,” Caius said, taking a knee, bending low enough to show the back of his head.  He had told Caius long ago, when he had been Tremble, that you never show your neck to an assassin.  The boy was never afraid of him. 

       Korus did not age and he had lived a very long time for a man who was always at death’s door.  He looked like he was Caius’s age, in fact, if not for the hard squint of his eye and the set line of his lips.  He was pale like most northerners, his hair was white (always kept too short too grab), his eyes a pale peach.  Lyria had been lucky enough to get her mother’s earthy coloring rather than his.  He was short for a man, barely taller than the average woman. He always wore grey and hid daggers all over his body.

       “I told you not to call me that.  I am no lord,” Korus said in his deep raspy voice.  He had been near death once when his throat had been slashed, the vocal chords nicked.  It had a strange effect on his voice.

Caius stood and nodded.

       “I forget things more frequently as time passes.  My price,” Caius explained in his plain unaffected way.

       “You’re different,” Korus shot back.  The two of them were evenly matched in terms of getting to the point.

       “There is a woman,” Caius agreed and Korus nodded to indicate he understood.

       “They are coming then…” Korus let it hang as a question and Caius nodded now.

       “It’s not here,” Korus said plainly and Caius tilted his head.

       “It,” Caius repeated, a question without inflection.

       “What the Goddess wants,” Korus proceeded.  “It has always been our duty to protect it, but the elders have been cowards, sent it far away.  She is blind here but her servants can feel it and would never come here looking for it.”

       “You know a lot for a man who is supposed to know nothing,” Caius added, his eyes narrowing and Korus laughed abruptly, a cold, short burst of sound.

       “And it won’t be long before the Shadows find me.  I have outlived all I have ever loved and I do not fear death.  Going back to your friends will spell their death.  You must know that the Goddess is aware of you,” Korus asked and Caius nodded.  It was why he left Tia and why he didn’t return to Rienna.  He would not have visited Eden if they weren’t already moving.

       “How will they know not to come here?” Caius asked now, referring to his friends.

       “The one with water sees the path.  The one in darkness soothes its wrath.  Ice and fire sacrifice the seed, when all is done, the world is freed,” Korus said, his voice bored and monotone.  “You know how the Diviners love their rhymes.”

       “I’ve never heard of this,” Caius said with deserved arrogance.  He was one of the many Keepers that held the deepest secrets of the order.

 

 

       Korus tore open his shirt and turned his back.  Caius gasped quietly to see it was carved into his back, written in the original tongue.

       “My mother’s gift before she took her own life.  Her visions drove her mad,” Korus explained, pulling the ruined shirt back up.

       “One hell of a way to keep a secret,” Caius admitted. “Damn, I told them we wouldn’t find answers here…”

       “And it’s better they don’t know they will.  They are young and it’s a lot of pressure knowing the significance of what they seek,” Korus added.

       “You know what it is,” Caius stated again and Korus frowned.

       “It is the Eye of Balor,” Korus stated and Caius’s face became dire.

       “The one that destroyed the world,” Caius provided.

       “The very same.  It is more powerful than any wild magic since it is no mere essence but the purest piece of the originals.  Without the Eye, the gods are blind,” Korus said, his voice faraway in a memory.

       “It is truly an eye?” Caius asked, the inflection strong now.  Korus’s short laugh burst forth again.

       “The Eye of Balor was always a crown.  More exactly, a gem that rested on his forehead.  He was always written as a giant ugly beast with one giant eye.  Keepers like you have always been so literal about the accounts.  He was immensely charming, volatile and paranoid.  In truth, the villains are never as ugly on the outside as they are within.  The Fomoire and the Danae were fair folk, corrupted by magic and power as any ever were.  Balor was so vain, he did not think the world should continue if he were gone.  If not for Cethlenn’s cleverness he might have succeeded, but she made the seeds that would someday start the world anew.”

       Caius was mute from the shock of the knowledge.  It made perfect sense once explained but it was so cleverly hidden.

       “I told Rienna I would protect them,” Caius argued weakly.

       “You will go when it is time.  For now, you have your own battles to fight,” Korus warned, drawing his sword.  Caius’s eyes narrowed and Korus shook his head.

       “No, my friend; I am not the Shadow you must fear, but they are here.  Now,” Korus barked and a window broke as he jumped, rolling aside.

 

       Tia missed Caius and worried for him; she knew it was taking too much space in her mind now, but could do little to stop it.  It made her nervous, what he had told her before, how she and Hope were the light and the dark and had no protection from the other.  She was fond of Hope and clearly Hope returned the affection, but the wild magic was not really theirs and her stars were already deadly beyond her control.  She felt Rowan’s hand close over hers as Hope’s car traveled on.

       Their next stop was supposed to be the Top of the World, but a huge foreboding wall of ice, clearly not natural, towered ahead and it seemed to go farther north and south than they could see from where they were.  Hope knew the Crown of Aridity lay to the north and it was where their larger group of friends was headed.  They weren’t supposed to meet up until later, but Hope didn’t like the idea of moving south either.  South was Bendruil where Solis and Eden would be.  Hope felt a little guilty that she hadn’t been as keen on checking up on them, but Caius had his pulse on every heartbeat so he would have known if there was cause for concern there.  In truth, her conflicted feelings concerning Conor were mostly what had her jumping there.  Caius had made her promise she would stop, that the servants of the Goddess would be looking more keenly as they moved north.

       The wall of ice would be something Eden could do but why?  They had to be more careful and this was no subtle way of redirection.  The mystery nibbled on the edges of her mind and she had frowned in deep thought as she detoured north.

       “Do you think Eden did this?” Tia asked, breaking the thick silence around them.

       Hope’s smile wavered and she shook her head.

       “I don’t know, but I don’t like this.  Whether we are being led by friend or foe, I have no doubt we’re in danger,” Hope admitted.

       “As if we ever weren’t.  Even from ourselves,” Tia mumbled and Rowan tilted his head to watch her face, a frown making his ears sag.

       “None of us back home took anything you were doing seriously.  Thought that you were just off having an adventure while we were kept from having fun.  No one was really saying much, just quick to telling us what to do.  Hope had wandered off and Reese was sent after her and we were supposed to be good little boys and wait.  Our parents…  for so long they acted like knowledge was dangerous.  Not knowing is why my brothers are dead.  My father knew Reese was dead, knew why, and he wouldn’t tell us,” Rowan said, his voice tightening with anger and sadness.  Tia hesitated then squeezed his hand.

       “I feel like I am to blame.  Dinsch must have been protecting me,” Tia surmised.  Caius would have been direct with the news: Tia’s stars killed Reese.  If that; he might have directly said ‘Tia killed Reese’ albeit unintentionally.  It dawned on her that her father might know even less.  She missed her parents, missed Darien, missed Reese…  Without Caius, she clung to Rowan now and it disgusted her—how much she wanted to pretend independence and failed so miserably at it.  What did her father know now?  Did he know about her power?  Did he send her off knowing she was in more danger being at home where she felt safest?  It filled her with anger—it was all this protecting her that made it impossible to stand on her own.

       “There’s no way he ever believed you did it on purpose, but you know your father is like a brother to him,” Rowan reassured.

       “You can rationalize all you want.  No one should have died just to protect someone else’s feelings,” Tia’s miserable reply came out in staccato.  Her head felt heavy now and it rested onto Rowan’s shoulder.  He should have pushed her away—she deserved it.  Too often she was endangering others and being little more than a liability.  Reese, Elm, Birch, even Cylar.  Who else would die because of her?  Hope, Rowan, Caius?  Would the world be cruel enough to take it all and leave her to die of old age, too much of a coward to end her own pain?  She hadn’t realized she had been crying until she felt the cool pool of moisture that had spread under her cheek through Rowan’s shirt.  She sat up and rubbed at it ineffectually.

       “Oh gods, I’m sorry,” Tia replied and her hand froze in place when she heard Hope’s loud annoyed sigh.

       “Tia, you just don’t realize how much you draw people to protect you.  You’re all bravado until you’re a puddle of emotion.  No one blames you more than you blame yourself and as helpless as you feel, you make everyone else feel even more helpless with how… inconsolable you are!  No one died simply protecting you!  Reese and Zaranth, you had no idea that would happen.  Our fathers?  They have every reason to protect each other and try to do the same for us.  Cylar…  Cylar put himself at risk for me, but you don’t hear me blaming myself.  Everything that involves you isn’t because of you and until you realize what the true enemy is, you’re going to keep pointing fingers at yourself,” Hope growled and both Rowan and Tia were taken aback.  Hope sighed again and shook her head.

       “I don’t mean to be cruel, you know that…  but…  right now, the Dark Lady tickles at my mind and I’m in a car with my brother and my best friend.  It’s really not the time to let her win,” Hope admitted.

       Tia swallowed, fighting the urge to let the guilt of being so self-absorbed be the new king of the pity party.

       “We’ll probably run into Conor since we’re heading north,” Tia responded, the odd urge to tease her bubbling back up and it worked.  It earned her a withering look from Hope and she giggled more from nerves than amusement.

       “Caius seems to enjoy my company too,” Hope shot back cruelly and even though Tia didn’t react, she had felt the kick in her gut.

       Tia focused out of the window instead of responding right away.  She couldn’t quite grasp at what she felt, what she wanted to say, or if she could even say it.

       “You miss Caius,” Rowan finally said and Tia opened her mouth to argue but snapped it shut.

       “I…  I don’t want to lose him,” Tia said softly.  She wondered if Hope’s Dark Lady might aim for the weak spot now.

       “He’s stronger than any of us,” Hope reassured.  Tia nodded but didn’t feel less scared.

       “It’s silly, I know, but I wish he had let me see him off,” Tia admitted.

       “He seems like the sort to be bad at goodbyes,” Hope supplied.

       “They still matter.  Especially when they might be the last,” Tia added.  She knew she was sounding morose again, but she couldn’t pull away from the sadness of missing him.

       “Tia…” Hope started, but Tia shook her head and smiled.

       “I’m fine, really. He can handle himself, I know that.  It doesn’t mean I won’t worry,” Tia chimed in, injecting as much enthusiasm as she could.  Night was approaching and it dawned on Tia that she had been holding Rowan’s hand for a while and he hadn’t complained. She looked down at the furry spotted backs of his hands, her fingers laced through them.  Those spots so like the reverse of a night sky.  Something was occurring to her and she frowned, stroking the soft fur there, coaxing the revelation from the edges of her struggling mind.  Her eyes widened as she looked up, Rowan’s attention fixed on her as she knew it would be.  She spoke to Hope, but her gaze held his.

       “Hope, stop the car!” Tia said, only loudly enough to be heard since she was breathless.

       Hope slowed the car to a stop but did not turn it off.  Tia broke her hold on Rowan’s hand as she fled from the car and headed closer to the wall, nearly tripping with each step.  Caius would have made fun of her gracelessness over the snow, but it was a fleeting thought and she stood a few feet from the wall now and looked it over.  She turned and saw Rowan stood there, a concerned look on his face and she blushed.

       “Ah, I didn’t mean to worry you.  Just… wait,” Tia pleaded, watching as the last slender fingers of the sun dipped behind the clouds.  She felt the sun vanish and she would have known the time even if she were blindfolded.  She shivered with the cold, having fled the car without coat or gloves, but she held her hands out and the pure white halo of her eager stars spun around her and spread out like obedient servants in fervent anticipation of her bidding.  Tia saw Rowan tense and her heart sank.

       “They… they won’t hurt you.  When they healed you, it… purified them somehow,” Tia said.  Rowan looked upset and shook his head.

       “I’m sorry, Tia, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.  I trust you, just… I thought they were all white,” Rowan inquired, pointing to what he meant.  Sure enough, when she looked over her right shoulder, a single red star loomed ominous.

       “Come forward, red star.  Why are you red?” Tia commanded.  She didn’t expect an answer because they never spoke; it had simply been her musing aloud.  It came forward and flickered.

       “I am Omen and when the time is come, you will know my purpose,” came the deep sinister voice inside of it.

“Do you mean me or those I love any harm?” Tia asked, but the stars just hovered silent and her heart flailed at what it could mean.

       Tia struggled to grasp for what Caius had already told her.  When she had given up shutting him up in bed, she had asked him more about Cian and Ethniu, the lovers whose powers resided in them.  He told her that Lugh, Conor’s host, had been their son, the only surviving child who had escaped Balor’s assassins (it had not escaped her that this had played out as a sort of prophecy—Lugh had been one of a set of triplets and Rowan was the only one to survive because of Caius.  In the legends, it wasn’t Cian who saved Lugh, but still a fairy that served him nonetheless). Ethniu, the daughter of Balor.  This is what sparked her train of thought, what made her call the stars.

       “The… the one who lives inside of me, Rowan.  Her name was Ethniu and she was a Fomoire.  Cian once told her that if he could, he would give her all the stars in the sky…  These stars, before I knew what they were, when I still thought they listened only to me, they began to show me the things I sought.  My mind is clearer now than it has been in a long time.  I know what I need it to find,” Tia told him, her voice tight with a mixture of fear and wonder.

       Tia had expected the stars to simply speed off to the northeast where the Top of the World was.  She suspected that Caius’s promise that it was just an uneventful stop was not the whole truth but she gasped as they simply sped off to the north where they were already going.  Rowan could tell by her frown that something was not right.

       “Tia?” he asked, prompting her to share what bothered her.  She shook her head and smiled.

       “Whatever the Goddess wants… it’s not where Caius wanted us to go.  But we’re being led there.  Maybe not just us either, nor our friends.  Stay on guard, Rowan.  I don’t know why, but things are moving faster now.  Whatever it is, it wants to be found,” Tia said and started to hurry back to the car.  Tia didn’t have to say it; after they filed in and closed the door, Hope simply sped off where she had seen the stars go.

 

       The plan had been simply to follow the coast again; from Bendruil, they would easily swing around from there to the Top of the World.  However, after a couple of hours, there was quite clearly an impassable and unnatural formation of ice towering in the distance.  It was quite clearly some sort of wall that no maps had ever mentioned.  Seije said they would have to get closer to see how far it went and it became clear that there was simply no way to pass it, that it extended farther than anything could pass around it.  Solis had said that he could melt it and they could pass through but Arden had stopped him, a rare look of seriousness on his face.

       “No, don’t,” Arden said, leaving no room for negotiation.  “Whatever made this is hoping for magic to be used against it.  It might be able to defend itself against it or it will tip off someone we don’t want to find us.”

       “So we just follow it, let it corral us to the north?  Into what?” Solis argued back and Arden’s eyes fell on him deliberately.

       “Perhaps, but they have lost the element of surprise as well,” Arden offered back.

       “What do you know about this that you’re not telling us?” Solis growled back.  It wasn’t like Solis to get hostile with Arden and Arden’s upturned eyebrow said as much.  Eden grabbed Solis’s arm, hoping to calm him.

       “I have been forthcoming with you and I am hiding nothing.  I don’t know what this is, but I know that big walls of sculpted ice typically count as landmarks worth putting on a map and this one isn’t.  When your friends see this, what are they going to think?” Arden asked and this last question he directed to Eden.  Her eyes widened.

       “That I’ve made it…” Eden said, shakily, her hands squeezing Solis’s arm.

       “If they trust that, then they’re going to be in danger.  There’s no way that even if we could cross it that we just trust they’ll be fine,” Arden pressed and Eden nodded again.

       “We never should have split up…” Eden cried out in anguish and Solis’s face softened as he laid his hand over hers.

       “We would’ve been bigger targets if we hadn’t, Eden.  We just have to follow the wall and move fast.  None of us have ever been under the illusion we have been safe.  Don’t lose heart now, love,” Solis told her gently and was rewarded with her softest smile.  Arden smiled but concealed it when Solis focused on him again.

       “I should not have been so quick to anger,” Solis said, by way of apology.

       “Seems to be a personality flaw with you fire types,” Arden amended in the same offhanded way and it had relieved Eden that it diffused the rough edges.  She tensed again as Seije approached and he nodded at them shortly.

       “Keep your eyes open.  I’m not sure what you kids can do with those powers, but try not to.  This is our last stop before we push straight onto the Crown, so use it wisely,” Seije said, his usual surliness, replaced by something softer.  He walked up to Eden and exchanged a look with her then Solis and then her again.

       “Don’t be so quick to heroics, all right?  I’d like to think this world has bigger plans for the two of you,” Seije told her kindly. Eden heart leapt at these words, forcing tears to her eyes.

       “Don’t count yourself out either, Uncle Seije,” Eden said, reaching a hand forward to squeeze his arm. He patted her hand then headed back to the car to wait for them.