They left Al’Fenthia the next morning, and if Liv could have pushed for the departure to happen sooner, she would have done so. Only Arjun’s warning in the Tomb of Celris prevented her, though she knew that a few days recovery hadn’t really been enough for her friends. In the end, it was a compromise that at once took more time than she was comfortable with, but still wasn’t enough to see everyone fully rested. She knew that it was inadequate, but she had no choice. She had to be in Whitehill when the fighting began, no matter what else happened.

It had been easy to make a plan based on the assumption that Benedict’s troops wouldn’t move until spring, but now that Liv had to actually take that on faith, when so many people she cared about depended on it, the reasoning seemed only a flimsy thing.

Aira Tär Keria sent them on their way, with a dozen Elden guards accompanying the group on their journey through Al’Fenthia to ward against any further assassination attempts. The elder’s help allowed Liv to save her mana for the journey - though, in truth, she wasn’t worried about running out. She had vaguely resolved to have Master Grenfell measure her capacity after they’d reached Whitehill, but Liv was certain it had increased substantially. Between that and the assorted pieces of jewelry she wore, Liv was confident that she could make the journey.

Vari and his men were expecting their arrival, and another squad of soldiers waited in formation around the bridge waystone when the light cleared away. Liv was grateful for it - and just as thankful that Elder Aira had sent word ahead the night before, because the Elden warriors lifted the saddlebags that had been stuffed with supplies, hauling them off the waystone.

“I was told that one of the Antrians had turned away from Ractia,” the young man remarked. He looked over Ghveris with wide eyes. “Still, it’s another thing to actually see one of these machines up close without it trying to kill us.”

“He’s not a machine,” Wren practically snarled. “He’s a person. They just took what was left of him after they’d used him up, and then built a suit of armor around it.”

“Of course,” Vari said. “My apologies.” He inclined his head to Wren, and then to Ghveris himself. The Antrian juggernaut, however, simply hoisted a set of saddlebags in each hand and carried them off the waystone.

“This way. We thought it would be easier for you to take off from the west side of the dam,” Vari explained, “rather than try to get height coming up out of the camp.”

Liv glanced over at Ghveris. Now that they were actually about to make the flight, her confidence that she’d be able to get him into the air seemed a little misplaced. After all, the war-machine was roughly the size of a draft horse; with all those layers of metal plate, he must have weighed a hundred stone or more.

The Elden soldiers set down all of the saddlebags that had been packed at Al’Fenthia, then backed off to make room. She would make three gyrfalcons, Liv decided. Wren could fly on her own, which left four of them to be carried. Arjun and Keri could ride together, and Rose could ride with Liv. Since they weren’t going by riverboat, Keri’s two soldiers had been left behind. That left the third conjured bird for Ghveris, and no one else. In fact, Liv resolved that the saddlebags should all go on the first two birds.

She drew her wand, muttered the familiar incantation, and created three enormous gyrfalcons from swirling motes of blue and gold mana. Once the artificial creatures had solidified, the Elden soldiers rushed forward to strap on the saddle bags - and saddles.

It was Airis ka Reimis who had finally done what Liv had put off for ages; he’d commissioned a group of leatherworkers in Al’Fenthia to replace the normal girth-straps with extra long pieces of leather. Now, the soldiers hurried to cinch the straps tight around the conjured birds, then secure the buckles. If everything worked as they hoped, they would all be a great deal less likely to go tumbling off.

Liv and her friends mounted the first two gyrfalcons and got airborne without issue: by this point, she’d used the spell enough times that she was confident in her control. Finally, the true test came as they circled above the dam.

Ghveris awkwardly climbed up onto the largest saddle Airis had been able to find, then settled in. Liv could immediately feel the difference. She’d hoped that by sitting two to a bird, and shifting all the supplies off Ghveris’ gyrfalcon, that the weight would be roughly equal. In truth, it wasn’t even close. Each of the other conjured birds had to carry perhaps a quarter of the juggernaut’s weight.

If it had just been an enormous physical bird, there was no way the plan would have ever worked. They would have had to use the dugout riverboats - or perhaps even marched the entire way, along the south bank of the Airaduinë. There was no guarantee those boats would have carried him, either.

Fortunately, the gyrfalcon was crafted of coherent mana. It was solid as steel, and yet supple; the bird itself had no weight to speak of, and was responsive to Liv’s intent, so long as it remained within the extent of her Authority. If she could raise and lower a platform of mana bearing the weight of her entire party and all their supplies, there was no reason she could not lift the bird.

The third gyrfalcon flapped its immense wings, and though there was no worldly wind that would ever have been sufficient for it to carry the war-machine up into the sky, Liv was willing to take whatever help she could get. Slowly, she brought Ghveris up, until he was riding the conjured bird just below the rest of them.

“I get the impression that was not easy,” Rose murmured into Liv’s ear. “You’re trembling and sweating, Liv.”

“The hard part’s over,” Liv responded, though she couldn’t help but slump forward in the saddle. “Now we just follow Wren.”

The black bat circled once, then flew off across the lake that lay to the west of the dam. Liv turned the three gyrfalcons to follow, and the water slid away beneath them, deep and blue with the light of the sun reflecting off its waves. Wren quickly found the place where the river flowed down into the lake, and led them west.

☙

When talking about it over a map, it sounded like riding on a group of magical birds would be less tiring than rowing upstream, or hiking through the jungles of Varuna. It was faster, certainly - on the first day, following Wren’s lead, the party passed the place where two rivers joined together into the broad Airaduinë. It was the southern tributary they followed, toward the great green mountains in the hazy distance.

By the time they halted for the evening, however, not only did Liv’s body ache, but she felt mentally exhausted as well. The effort of maintaining three conjured mounts, and carrying Ghveris’ immense weight on top of that, left her hardly able to form words when they landed.

Wren found them a sun-drenched clearing around a small cenote, but Liv could hardly enjoy it for the ache in her back and thighs. She staggered across the ground when she finally got her boots down, and rather than wait for her friends to unload the saddles and supplies, she simply allowed the conjured gyrfalcons to dissolve back into wisps of mana. Even pulling the remnant of ambient mana back in with her Authority felt like trying to force herself to run uphill.

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Fortunately, her companions made camp without any reminder on her part.

“Sit down and rest,” Arjun insisted. “We’re going to need you to do the same thing over again tomorrow, and you’re clearly worn out.”

Liv just grunted and sat down on the grass at the edge of the cenote. It was Wren who took charge of making a meal, pulling a pot from the saddlebags and filling it from the cenote. Once she had water boiling over a campfire, the huntress began adding herbs, dried fruits and vegetables, and chunks of salted meat. Only a day out from Al’Fenthia and with full saddlebags, there was no reason to live off the land yet.

To Liv’s surprise, it was Ghveris who sat down next to her while the others went about the business of setting up for the night. The Antrian settled by her side with all the grace of an avalanche, his armored feet ripping up clods of earth.

“I will keep watch,” the war-machine declared, speaking his antique dialect of Vakansa rather than the Lucanian they’d been practicing with him. “I have no need to sleep, and can easily dispatch any mana beasts that approach the camp.”

“You must get tired at some point,” Liv responded, frowning.

“I slept for a thousand years,” Ghveris rumbled. “In the cold and in the dark. I might as well have been dead the entire time. Now, I -”

To Liv’s surprise, the Antrian hesitated.

“Your brain is still the same as it ever was,” she pointed out. “I’m not sure how much flesh and blood the old gods left inside that armor, but as long as you have some portion of you that’s alive, it’s going to need to be taken care of. I understand if you don’t need to eat - all the war machines we’ve found seem to operate off of mana. But the human mind needs rest. Arjun could probably explain it better than I could; medicine’s his specialty, after all. But I still trained with a chirurgeon for years. If people don’t sleep, they stop being able to think clearly. Eventually, whether you want to or not, you’re going to pass out. And I’d rather have you do it while someone else is on watch, than see you fall out of your saddle.”

Ghveris sighed, with a great exhalation of steam. “You are correct, Lady Livara. My selfishness would have weakened the group and threatened our mission. I will take a shift at watch, and then sleep as best I can. It is only - I am afraid.”

Liv raised her eyebrows. “Afraid? Of going to sleep?”

The immense bulk of the war machine shifted, and Liv realized that Ghveris was nodding his head. “It is not rational,” he admitted. “I know this, and yet I cannot help but feel it. I slept helpless for so long, while the world changed around me. If your two companions had not woken me, I might have kept on dreaming, unaware, for another thousand years. I might have slept until all of my people had died out, and the world itself grew cold and dark and lifeless. Who is to say that if I allow myself to rest now, I will wake in the morning? As I said, it is a foolish fear - the fear of a child. But I cannot escape it.”

“If I was confident that you still breathed like the rest of us did, I’d teach you how to clear your mind that way,” Liv said, considering. “My first teacher drilled that into me a long time ago, and while I thought it was silly at the time, I understand why now. What about - Wren!”

The dark-haired huntress looked up from where she was stirring the pot of stew.

“Do your people have any old lullabies?” Liv asked. “Songs, to help put children to sleep?”

“A few,” Wren admitted. “Not that I’ve ever been much of a singer.”

“Could you share one with us tonight, after we eat?” Liv asked. “Something old.” The armor of steel at her side stopped moving entirely, like a deer frozen when it caught sight of the hunter.

“I suppose.” Wren shrugged. “You have to promise not to laugh at me, though.”

Under Keri’s direction, Rose and Arjun helped put two canvas tents up, using rope and poles that had been packed at Al’Fenthia. Liv’s father and the rest of the expedition to the dam had apparently slept in just this sort of thing, and there were even lengths of cheesecloth ready to be attached to the canvas that formed the roofs. Hanging down, the porous material allowed a night breeze to pass, while keeping out the insects - in theory.

Liv felt a bit ashamed not to be helping them, but until the smell of the stew reached her, she wasn’t certain that she could have moved if her life depended on it. Only when her stomach rumbled at the scent did she recall that she’d done nothing more than nibble on a bit of smoked jerky while they were in the air. Bowls of turned wood were passed around, along with spoons, and with the exception of Ghveris, everyone dug in.

“You spent weeks paddling up-river, dragging the boats up each night, and making camp?” Rosamund asked Keri. He nodded. “That sounds exhausting - brutally exhausting.”

“By the time we got to the dam, we were nearly out of food,” Keri admitted. “I asked your father about it at one point, Liv, and he told me that we’d either take the waystone, and have supplies from Al’Fenthia, or that it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

Liv swallowed a mouthful of stew so hot that it nearly burned her throat on the way down. “I didn’t realize you all came so close to not making it.”

Keri shrugged. “We did succeed, in the end. And I doubt Valtteri wanted to worry you. But if we hadn’t had help from Wren’s people, I don’t see how we could have done it. This jungle isn’t anything like the north. We brought the supplies we thought we’d need, but we weren’t actually prepared.”

“Before the old gods were overthrown,” Ghveris rumbled, “this entire land was crisscrossed by roads. There were a dozen towns. In the mountains, they mined precious metals and stones. Much of what is now jungle was not wild, then - it was carefully cultivated to produce fruits, nuts, and rare wood. There were fishing ports along the east coast. It would have been difficult to lose yourself anywhere in Varuna, and not stumble across some trace of civilization before walking a day or two in any direction.”

“And it’s all gone now,” Arjun remarked, setting aside his empty bowl. “Twelve hundred years, and we don’t understand even a fraction of what was lost. And what’s worse, hardly anyone even seems to want to.”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked.

“The mages guild is the only group of people who really seem to care about trying to save knowledge,” the dark-haired healer explained. “Nevermind rediscover what’s lost, or even build something new. There was no reason for me to be the first person from Lendh ka Dakruim to go to Coral Bay, you know. It’s been almost a hundred years since the Lamonts founded the college. That’s four, five generations. And yet no one from any of the jati ever even tried to go there.”

“People don’t like change,” Rose said, after a moment. “My family’s like that. Just passing down the same spells our grandparents used was good enough for them. It’s like they were afraid that going to Coral Bay would mean I gave up our secrets, or something. That they wouldn’t get me back.”

“In a way, they were right,” Liv pointed out. “I mean, you haven’t taught anyone Cem, but you did run off with me. As far as most of Lucania is concerned, I’m a criminal - a murderer at best, a traitor at worst.”

“None of you have seen the old times with your own eyes,” Ghveris said. “You did not walk the streets of Corsteris, and look up at the towers of glass and steel that reached into the heavens. You have never known the great machines that wove mana throughout the clouds, so that not a drop of rain fell nor a wind blew that was not planned and purposeful.”

The great machine waved his enormous arm to indicate the jungle around them. “This sweltering heat around us? Step through the doorway into a shop or a theater in Corsteris, and the heat fell away, replaced by a pleasant chill.” Ghveris slapped a flying bug that had landed on his thigh. “If a worker was sickened by these pests? The medicine of the Vædim could cure it as easily as I stand up from this ground.”

“If they cared to do it,” Liv pointed out. “I get the impression that most of the time they weren’t very interested in taking much care of their human slaves.”

“That is true,” Ghveris admitted. “It was a time of wonders - but those miracles were directed to serve the purposes and comforts of the gods alone. We all served them. And their most favored servants lived in almost the same luxury as they did.” He turned his enormous helm toward Keri.

“My grandfather was only a child when the war began,” Keri said. “But from everything he told me, Bælris was not nearly so cruel as some of the others.”

“Ractia thought the Lord of Light a coward,” Ghveris said. At Keri’s sharp glance, he lifted his arms, hands spread wide and open. “Her words, not mine. The Vædim who fought detested any who they felt betrayed them.”

“How about that song, now?” Liv said to Wren. Her bodyguard - her friend - shot her a puzzled look, and Liv made a slight nod in the direction of Ghveris.

“Alright.” Wren wet her lips with a drink from her wineskin, took a deep breath, and then began to sing. It was halting, at first, as if the huntress was rediscovering a tune she hadn’t practiced in a long, long time. Neither Liv, nor any of her friends could understand the words, which were in the dialect of the Red Shield Tribe and the other children of Ractia.

It was evident to Liv, however, the Gheveris did understand, for the machine leaned forward toward Wren to listen. After the first song, without being asked, Wren went into a second; and by the time that one was finished, the ancient war-machine’s blue eyes had faded to mere embers, and he did not move.