Of Mortal Dreams: Chapter XI [Part 2]

Adevan

Adevan didn’t know how much longer he lay in the icy stream, but he woke to the walls of a cave lit by the flickering of a fire. His clothing was still damp but not soaked through, so a respectable amount of time had passed. He sensed at once that he was deep underground, and far enough from an entrance that there was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. The cold around him felt old and undisturbed. He heard no insects or birds. He smelled damp stone and another halfblood. Someone breathed deeply, as if burdened.

“Aiel l’emaun a’Dabdaganem,” a young voice sighed. Adevan had never heard the language. It was gentler than the coarse halfblood tongue. “An dou aes perotha.”

“No,” the old woman replied, in the common language. “His beast is wounded, so he will have to stop long before then. And we have a Dragar. We can find him.”

“O’e, mea vondar t’elfe’mel?”

She did not immediately answer whatever question had just been asked. When the silence went on for longer than he would have anticipated, Adevan’s curiosity got the better of him and he turned his head slowly, towards the voices, only to find one silhouette already facing him. The old woman. Her watchful eyes glimmered blue against her shadowed face, picking up and reflecting every shred of light, brighter than any other halfblood eyes he had seen. Opposite the fire to her, sat a narrow, serious boy. The halfblood woman cleared her throat, speaking in their shared tongue.

“Well? Will you come?”

“Come where?”

“To find the she-mage taken today,” the boy across from her replied, as easily as if he had grown up among halfbloods. “The girl you tried to kill.”

Wiry and unassuming, the young man—Adevan could now see that his shoulders were too broad to belong to a boy—was dressed entirely in woolen clothing, including a thick hat that was pulled down around his ears. He seemed to carry no weapons, but a satchel lay on the cave floor beside him and from it rose a host of herbaceous scents. When the surprise wore off, Adevan scoffed and sat up, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t bound. They had no intention of trying to force him to do anything. The old halfblood woman had merely prevented him from throwing that rock at Evershade and his damned bird. His head still hurt from her savage blow, though he already felt that the wound had healed.

“There is no ‘finding’ her,” Adevan retorted in the common tongue, standing carefully and with one hand to the rough cave wall. “Once Evershade takes a mage, they are lost. It’s over. I’m sorry.”

“I care not that you are accustomed to failure,” the young man retorted. His accent was difficult to place. “You are bound to the Evershade blood and can find him. And you must.”

Adevan chuckled at the formal speech and misplaced confidence. To his eye, there was not a single person in this cave who could make him do anything.

“Must I? Really.”

“Yes.”

“Hah!” Adevan’s scorn echoed through the cave, which he now realized was actually a tunnel that went as far as he could hear in both directions. “Find Evershade? Why would I do such a stupid thing? Not really my bag of bones.”

The young man peered at him. The judgment was unmistakable when he said: “You fear him.”

“Of course I fear him,” Adevan clapped back. “Revon Evershade is the greatest dark mage to ever live. There’s no stopping him.”

The young man cocked his head. “Revon?”

“Revon Evershade. The ravenrider that took the girl,” Adevan explained sharply, confused. “He’s who you’re after, isn’t he?”

It was a moment before anyone moved. Then the young man let out a mirthless, breathing sort of laugh. He nodded, muttering to himself.

“Oh, but he has done well.”

“As have you,” the old woman insisted.

There was a deference in the way she spoke to him, as if she was speaking to someone older and more important than herself. Adevan peered at the young man, finally seeing what should have been clear the moment he saw him. To be fair, he had somehow masked the scent of his magic. This was no mortal youth. 

“You’re a mage.” These damn mountains were crawling with them.

“Not just any mage,” the old woman quipped.

“I assume he took that name to conceal his true nature,” the mage replied, ignoring them both. “But the mage you call Revon is truly Obric Evershade.”

Obric Evershade. Adevan had heard the name only a handful of times, and certainly never in reference to someone living. He glanced between the unlikely pair before him. Neither moved to correct what had been said.

“Obric,” Adevan repeated. Still, silence. “The ancient mage who oversaw the destruction of my ancestors and established the Counsel?”

“The very one. Though I would hardly call the end of the last age ‘ancient.’”

“Ah.” Adevan leaned against the wall now, wondering whether he had been picked up by madmen. He crossed his arms. “You believe a mage from the last age is still alive?”

“Yes.”

I don’t think that’s possible. “And who are you?”

“He is Tareth Persefydon,” the old woman announced too loudly, only too eager to do so. “Seventy-first elder son of his house and a keeper of the south sea, whose blindsight has cloaked this valley since the time of Althioc Dragar—your forebear.”

That was no commendation. Everything had gone to the dogs because of Althioc. The mage sighed, his round face drawn tight. Her words seemed to pain him.

“And you’re what—his servant?”

“I am Nysa, his watcher,” the woman snapped.

“Right, I see.” Adevan took a breath. Then, to the mage: “So, you’re an elderblood.”

“Da—yes, he is.”

Adevan looked between them. Again, neither moved to further explain.

“Too sane to be radges, so just a fine pair of grifters. The best I’ve ever seen, I’ll give you that,” he mused aloud. As he spoke, his anger returned along with his sense of physical strength. “But you’ve already prevented me from sparing everyone the misery of a second Evershade, so I have no more time to waste on you.”

He turned to face one dark tunnel and stopped, realizing even as he turned that he had no idea where he was going. He could probably smell his way back, but if the mage could mask the scent of his magic, he imagined that they hadn’t left much of a trail. He could already identify several different savors of air from that direction, meaning there were plenty of passages and plenty of places to get lost forever. The silence swelled.

“We’re too far down and too far in for guesswork,” the old woman said. “You could wander these tunnels a hundred years and never come close to seeing the sun again.”

Heat rose to Adevan’s face. He scowled back at her.

“That is the way we came. Walk straight for a day and you will come back out into the valley again,” the mage offered, gesturing in the direction Adevan had intended to go. The old woman grunted her disapproval. “But there is an outlet a day from here that will take you to surface on the eastern side of the range.”

Adevan cursed. “We’re already under the mountains.”

“About halfway across, so you will only be doubling back. Our path offers a much shorter route to the Bladmuir.”

Adevan stilled. The Bladmuir was a very, very old name for Blackmoor. A name few now living remembered. And the way he said it spoke for itself—no hesitation, no trickery.

“How did you know I’m headed that way?”

“The bit of allwood in your vest is freshly split,” Tareth said. “Only one allwood survived the fellendomor and it was deep in the Bladmuir.”

Survived. A fair portrayal of that unfortunate stump of a tree.

“If you do not believe that I am an elderblood by the time we reach that crossing, I am unworthy of the word and we can part ways without ill will,” Tareth offered. “If you do believe that I am elderblood by then, I would beseech you to join us in finding that girl. More is at stake than you now understand.”

What more could be at stake? Vara falling into the hands of Revon Evershade was a reversal of any good fortune that her very existence had seemed to prove, with effects that would ripple for generations. Once she took the Gaunt—which she surely would—and joined the ranks of dark mages, there was no telling what kind of horrors she would unleash as an Evershade. Revon’s recent dormancy had been a welcome reprieve and even that seemed at an end. So Tareth’s warning meant little to Adevan, and he would have disregarded it, but for the fact that he was a stranger to the maze of truly ancient tunnels that ran beneath Arras. He was already late in returning to Sisela. It was ever more imperative that he be by her side in the coming days. No time to waste, indeed.

His silence seemed a sufficient answer. Tareth nodded, sweeping up his satchel. Nysa pulled herself to her feet with her staff and a grunt.

“This will be much easier with you walking. I am weary of your weight.”

Adevan gave him a doubtful look. “You carried me this far?”

With a crooked smile, the mage reached out over the fire and, as Adevan watched, the flames crushed in on themselves, as though smothered by an invisible blanket. But the fire’s light did not dissipate or turn to embers. It shrank in size, yet not in brilliance, warping into a pinprick that glowed and shuddered like starlight. The powerful scent of true magic spread through the tunnel, a deep scent that reminded Adevan of a sea storm. Tareth calmly picked up the glowing orb with two fingers, and held it up, illuminating the tunnel ahead of him. Adevan didn’t move to follow. He was frozen where he stood.

He had seen mages turn men to ash, watched them fling fallen trees without touching them, and felt the cold weight of their cruel minds on his own. No Counsel mage would do what Tareth had just done—he wasn’t even sure they could. He had only ever seen them consume. Magic was a method of destruction, coercion, or artifice.

Nysa looked back at Adevan. He felt her self-satisfaction.

“Bet you’ve never seen that,” she hissed. 

He most certainly had not.