When the light of the waystone faded, Liv, her grandmother, Kaija, Matthew and Arjun were left crammed around a block of ice nearly six feet long and three feet wide. Mistress Trafford had wanted to come, but the chirurgeon wasn’t a mage. Without even the rushed introduction to Elden mana circulation techniques that Liv had given Matthew, Trafford was guaranteed to be ravaged by mana sickness. Liv had ordered her to remain behind at Bald Peak.

Now, Liv slid a parchment-thin pane of coherent mana beneath the ice, lifted it, and carried the block along in her wake as she led the party to the control room of the ring. Arjun, and even Kaija, had been before, of course – and Liv wouldn’t have bet a single copper coin that it was her grandmother’s first trip – but for Matthew, everything was new. The clean lines of the corridors, the lights that flickered to life as they approached, and then died in their wake. None of it could ever be mistaken for Lucanian craft, or even Elden.

Liv couldn’t help but smile when they caught sight of the great viewing window which looked down upon the spinning world from so impossibly high. Blood and shadows, she’d seen it before, and if there hadn’t been so many other things to do, Liv could have sat and watched the continents and oceans roll by for hours. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“Keep my brother up here while we move her,” Liv murmured to Kaija. The armorer nodded, and placed a hand on Matthew’s shoulder.

“Do you see all the white, there?” she said, pointing at the glass. “That’s the true north, where Kelthelis is, and the Tomb of Celris.”

As enchanting as the view was, Matthew still half-turned to follow Liv as she maneuvered Triss, and the block of ice that surrounded her, out into the hall.

She shook her head. “Let us move her onto the table, Matthew,” she said. “The rooms are small enough without crowding more people in. We’ll come get you once she’s situated.”

Kaija steered Matthew back to the window with a firm hand at his elbow. “Can you point out Coral Bay for me? I’ve never been that far south.”

Once the door was shut behind them, Liv could no longer hear the conversation. She continued on with Arjun and her grandmother, toward the corridor where Elder Aira had first shown her the enchanted healing tables.

Ghveris waited for them there, just outside the room where Liv had brought Keri. It didn’t surprise Liv that the Antrian war-machine had heard them coming; the rest of the ring was empty and abandoned, after all. Only the oldest of the Eld seemed to even know how to get there, and Ractia was barred from it ages past by the Trinity.

Liv held up a single finger, a silent request for Ghveris to wait, and lowered the block of ice down to rest on the floor, just outside the opposite room.

“Arjun and I can take things from here,” Liv’s grandmother promised. She turned to the healer. “Once I end the spell, the ice will melt. Can you use one of those ever-so-convenient guild mana platforms to lift her and carry her onto the bed? She’ll be a bit disoriented, at first, and I don’t want her exposed to this mana density for long.”

“Of course.” Arjun stepped up to the opposite side of the frozen woman, and slid his wand of Neem wood out of its sheath.

“Let’s try to stay out of the way,” Liv suggested to Ghveris. “How’s Keri?” She squeezed past the immense bulk of the juggernaut and into the room.

“He sleeps only fitfully,” Ghveris said, his voice a rumble so low that, each time she heard it anew, Liv could hardly believe it was real. “Nightmares, perhaps.”

Liv bit her lip, and considered whether it was worth warding the room against dream magic. With Genevieve Arundell dead, chances were that any bad dreams Keri might be suffering were entirely natural, rather than coming from hostile magic.

She approached the bed. Keri was dressed only in a long, loose linen shirt. It didn’t look like one of his, and she suspected that Arjun or one of the healers from Lendh ka Dakruim had ordered him dressed in it, before she’d had him moved first to the Sign of the Terrapin, and then to the ring.

It was always odd, Liv thought to herself, how different people looked when they were sleeping. The cares that had burdened Inkeris for months or years were no longer visibly on his face. She wondered whether he was dreaming of his son; she hoped so. Liv rested her hand on his forehead, and reassured herself that there was no sign of fever. Then, she walked over to the pane of glass upon which colorful lines of Vædic text scrolled.

Liv didn’t have Elder Aira’s familiarity with the ancient enchantments, or even Arjun’s medical expertise – but she thought that with the aid of the silver crown, she might get by without either. She placed her hand on the pane of glass, and closed her eyes.

The Crown of Celris connected to the vast networks of enchantments, which Liv felt stretching out from the room in intricate, nested chains of magic. The complexity was staggering. She felt ancillary words present and active in the table: a combination of Cel and Vær, to keep Keri warm, or to lower his temperature; Aluth, to manage his body’s response to the potent mana which permeated the entire ring; Ved, to keep him hydrated – and more functions that she didn’t even understand. Perhaps with hours or days of study. Her impulsive proposal to move one of the enchanted tables seemed, suddenly, very foolish. She wouldn’t even know how to begin isolating the necessary enchantments, or how to untangle them from the magic of the ring.

But that wasn’t what Liv was here for.

The magic of the healing table spoke to her, sung in Liv’s mind, and she understood it. With the key she wore on her brow, the enchantments acknowledged her as, if not one of the Vædim themselves, at least one of their stewards.

“Arjun was able to find the clot of hardened blood and break it down,” Liv murmured, explaining what she knew aloud, to Ghveris. “The flow of blood was interrupted. When the blood couldn’t reach his brain, that’s when he passed out.”

She felt, more than saw, the Antrian nod. “This is a spell of Ractia’s servants,” the juggernaut confirmed. “The most powerful could set the magic with a touch, and then walk away. Hours or days later, the spell would take effect, and their target would simply die.”

“A contingent spell,” Liv told him, with a frown. “A particularly nasty one, using the future tense of Ract. The way it kills is that - without blood - the brain begins to die. The longer the clot is allowed to remain, the longer the brain goes without blood, the more of it dies. Lose enough, and the rest of the body follows.”

Ghveris considered that. “How much of Inkeris’s mind died?”

“From what I can tell, relatively little,” Liv said. “I don’t think losing any of the brain is good, but Arjun got to him quickly. I thought the table would repair the places that were damaged, but isn’t what happened. Instead, it seems to have - well, sort of rearranged them? I can’t say I entirely understand it. But if I’m interpreting what the enchantments are telling me correctly, they’ve finished their work on him. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be awake.”

Liv opened her eyes, and shook her head. “I need to get Arjun and my grandmother to take a look for me, but it seems like something else is wrong.”

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“His spirit is gone,” Liv’s grandmother finally pronounced, after placing her hands to either side of Keri’s head.

Triss was now resting in the room across the hall, and once Arjun was certain that neither she nor her unborn child were in danger of mana sickness, Matthew had been allowed to join her. Liv had poked her head into the room just long enough to see how her sister-in-law was doing.

“It’s amazing,” Triss groaned, with heavy-lidded eyes and a broad smile on her face. “I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up. It’s been days – weeks – since I felt this good.”

“See if you can get her to sleep,” Arjun told Matthew, and then he and Eila tär Väinis had followed Liv in to check on Inkeris. Arjun had agreed with Liv, after spending a few moments pouring over the Vædic text on the screen, that there was no physical reason Keri shouldn’t be awake. Which had left Liv’s grandmother to take a look.

“Your father took you to the edge of a rift, didn’t he?” Eila asked Liv. “To let the currents of mana take your spirit where they would? To show you things?”

Liv nodded. “He took me to the edge of Bald Peak. Keri was one of the people I saw, actually,” she recalled. “Along with Wren and Ractia and – though I didn’t realize it at the time, even you, Ghveris.”

The war-machine looked in through the open doorway, and his blue eyes flashed like fire. “The world showed you people who would be important to you,” he rumbled.

Ghveris, Wren and Keri, but not Cade or Rose. Liv put that thought aside to be considered at a later time. “Is there a way to bring his spirit back, then?” she asked her grandmother.

“Sit down on the floor.” The old woman sighed. She circled around the bed until she was able to stand behind Liv.

“Shouldn’t you be the one doing this?” Liv asked. “I don’t have the slightest idea how to go about it.”

“I’m nothing to him,” her grandmother explained. “But he knows you. Trusts you. No delaying, now.”

Rather than endure any further chiding, Liv lowered herself down, crossed her legs, and tried her best to get comfortable. Then, she closed her eyes.

“Breathe in,” Eila murmured. Liv felt her grandmother’s hands on her shoulders. “You remember the words? Sink into them and clear your mind. In the first age of the world, the Vædic Lords cast their eyes and their ears anywhere they wished. Across mountains and oceans –”

“-- nothing was concealed from their sight and their notice,” Liv said, adding her voice to her grandmother’s. “The winds of mana whispered in their ears of things yet to come, things that might be. We are but children in their shadows, but some small measure of their power remains.”

“You do not go seeking a vision,” Eila said aloud, as Liv slowed her breathing and focused on the feel of mana flowing around her, through the ring. “You go seeking one who is lost. Find him, and bring him back.”

This time, Liv felt it. When her father had done this, she’d been younger - and so much less experienced. The amount she’d learned about magic, between coming back from Freeport and coming up to the ring now, was astounding when she stopped to think about it. Perhaps it was Aluth that helped her feel, but there was a sudden, sharp push from her grandmother’s Authority.

Liv felt a brief surge of panic as she seemed to jolt free of her body. She could have fought it, but she didn’t. If she trusted anyone, she trusted her family – her family by blood, those who’d adopted her, and the ones she’d found along the way.

She let herself drift among the enchantments of the broken ring just long enough to get her bearings, and then Liv threw herself downward toward the spinning world below. Where would Keri be - where would he go? It wasn’t, in the end, a difficult question to answer, because Liv knew what she would do in his place.

Her spirit tumbled down through the clouds and out into the winds that whipped high above the sea and the land. Varuna turned beneath her: Liv recognized the eastern coastline from when they’d made a map of waystones. Once she had a single point of reference, she knew where to go.

Skimming over the ocean, like she had on that day with her father, Liv wondered at the surge of the waves, at the great whales that leaped up out of the water in a great spray of mist. Almost, she wished that she had travelled by ship with her father and with Keri, from Elden lands to Varuna.

When she found the western coast of Isvara, Liv turned north, until she found the mountains. She felt like she had more control, this time – perhaps as a result of her Authority training. She looked for a place of pines on the mountain slopes, where the hot springs bubbled and steamed, where Keri’s ancestors had built their great halls, sprawling out across the mountain.

She skittered along the stone paths between the springs, swinging wide to avoid Keri’s aunt, Väina. The old woman paused in her steps, narrowed her eyes, and cast about as if she’d caught a faint noise, or a glimpse of motion, but Liv was already gone.

Rei was at his lessons. She found him at a small desk and chair, with a quill and ink bottle in hand, carefully copying out a conjugation table, at the instruction of an older Elden man she did not recognize. Liv recognized the word immediately: it was Savel, of course. For a moment, she watched the little boy write, and then she cast about for any trace of Keri.

Liv swirled about the room on currents of mana, and she was just about to give up and search somewhere else when she passed through something.

It was the oddest feeling - without a body, whatever made up ‘her’ was permeable. She had no fingers or skin, no bones. Liv could pass through the polished wood walls of Mountain Home as easily as she might dive into a bank of fog. But all of a sudden, she was both penetrating and being penetrated, simultaneously.

A brightness and a warmth was all around her, and in her, and with it came flashes of thought, memory, dream, and language. Liv was, for a moment, Keri, cradling his infant son to his chest. She caught glimpses of violence: a blood drenched idol of Ractia, somewhere deep underground, with knots of Elden warriors fighting and dying. She was one of them, too.

Whether the moment of recognition was hers, or Keri’s – or perhaps both at once – Liv did not know. She was aware, without ears, of her name spoken; and the voice was Keri’s, though without tongue. Along with her name came another flash of memory: a young man, kneeling in the snow, and a vision of a woman’s eyes…

The blue of winter sky, cracked over with frost.

Liv recoiled, separated, and swirled about the opposite end of the room, suddenly only herself again. Keri? she asked, though she already knew the answer. This content belongs to novelfire(.)net

Liv?

It was not speech, precisely, without a body. And yet, communication was somehow possible. Slowly, with a tentative motion, Liv crossed the room again, so that at the edges their beings touched, and mingled. Come back with me, she thought at him with every fiber of will that she had. If she could have taken his hand, she would have.

Instead, she wrapped herself around and within him, and pulled, gently. More images slid through Liv’s awareness, and perhaps because he knew who she was now, every one of them was of her. It was uncomfortable, to see herself from a man’s point of view, and Liv wondered what memories Keri might be sharing from her mind. She wasted a moment by hoping it would be nothing to embarrassing, and then set to work guiding him up out of the halls of Mountain Home, into the sky.

Once Keri seemed to understand what she wanted, it became easier. Rather than fight her, he followed, and their spirits danced around each other, high and higher, like two snowflakes caught on the wind. Liv led him up to the clouds, and through, out of the blue and into the black, until they were surrounded by the vista of stars above, and the slowly turning orb below, upon which lived everyone that either of them had ever known.

The ring, Liv thought, casting about for it. And there it was - encircling the planet like a necklace. She’d only ever see it from below, a brightness in the sky. But now, the damage which had been done to the enormous structure was clear. It was broken, like a shattered wagon wheel. Splinters of metal, larger than a castle, jutted out from the ring at off angles. Great rents in the metal skin exposed darkness within. The size was utterly incomprehensible, and Liv had difficulty believing that even the old gods could have built something this utterly colossal.

In the sections which were undamaged, light of many hues ran along veins of mana stone. The magic pulsed with power, and as Liv led Keri’s spirit up it, they passed out of emptiness and into a warm, comforting sea of mana. It was like stepping into a shoal, and then into the depths of a rift.

Together, they passed through the metal structure of the great ring. They were close now, and Liv tugged Keri’s spirit on with greater speed, as if they were sprinting down a grass-covered hill, hand in hand. Into the medical rooms they sank, and then their bodies were before them: Keri lying motionless on the bed, and Liv seated on the floor, her legs crossed.

Go. She pushed him toward his body, and only after she felt the last trace of Keri pull away from her did Liv sink back into her own physical form.

When Liv opened her eyes, she saw that Keri had turned his head, and was looking at her. The rush of relief that flooded through her only abated when Liv felt something very, very wrong.

Her Authority extended across the room, reaching toward Keri – but rather than pressing up against his, the two mingled, permeable, and mixed in the empty space between them.