Worlds of Ash Rewritten

Chapter 23-30

Chapter Twenty-Three

“It can’t be,” Poppa Henry moaned.

This time, Ash didn’t even bother to wonder what her grandfather might be going on about. Let him moan as much as he wanted because…well…there was something behind this. It was a nudge in her mind—or maybe more like a worrisome itch just beyond her fingertips. Ash knew there was an explanation if only she could reach it. Was Jeth a part of Penthya?

Something clicked. Finally, and with a hallelujah chorus of “I can’t believe this miracle has arrived,” Ash grabbed hold, gave a good long scratch, and got at least one concrete answer that she immediately understood and could fully accept. She didn’t even have to say a word to get it.

Jeth did play a large part in her Poppa Henry’s stories. In what she was now remembering, Ash was even sure that Jeth had been someone her Poppa Henry had always said had just been a great friend to Princess Isabella’s mystery husband. But Jeth was supposed to have died long before that mystery husband ever made it to Castle Watch. How could he be here now?

Ash let that question drift. It was like ignoring her grandfather’s moan. It wasn’t important.

If someone wanted to question this resurrection—maybe make a few complaints about how it made no sense at all—let them because Ash sure wouldn’t. A day ago, her grandfather had been dead so why not have Jeth stop on by? Why not even bring everyone back? Honestly, Ash kind of hoped Princess Isabella might just pop up from out of nowhere too, saunter straight from the Kawshun with a wide smile of, “See, anyone can be here,” plastered all over her face.

But no matter how much Ash did look every which way—and it was stupid, she knew that, yet she did it anyway—not another soul appeared. It was just Jeth who was around.

Ash watched as he talked to the rider named Amalin. More and more, the strong blue light all around Amalin was starting to fade, Ash now seeing that the jewel she carried was kept in place by the staff itself, the wood having grown over it in thick little arms that let the sapphire be seen, yet secure. It was beautiful.

“You can offer us a way out,” Jeth asked. “You’re not lying?”

“I can offer,” Amalin said, “yet not for you, and not for that little girl behind you. For the rest…”

Jeth took a step towards her. “But you said…”

He had already been standing near to Amalin, just two or three feet away, his proximity not a problem, yet when he moved, the other riders reacted. All of them pulled out long white swords Ash hadn’t yet seen.

They were impressive weapons, thick blades that looked more like they’d been made from sharp bone rather than steel. They’d been kept hidden in worn and ruined belts, things Ash had also missed, but now that she saw them, she found that those belts were around every rider’s waist except for Amalin. She alone held just the staff as the other three had their swords out in a flash, each pointed right at Jeth.

“Whoa…whoa…” Jeth said. He threw his arms up in surrender. “I only wanted to know why the lady would admit to lying.”

“I’m not lying,” Amalin said. She slammed her staff into the ground before sliding off her horse.

“But you said you could take us out of this world, and now you’re telling me I can’t leave!”

“The Riders of the Kawshun are for lost souls who have not yet crossed over,” Amalin explained. She yanked her staff free and held it tight as she walked to the Unkindness. “We can do nothing for you. We are for the dead—you are alive—you have no need to cross.”

“What do you mean,” Jeth asked.

“Only this,” Amalin said.

She leapt off the Kawshun. Instantly, the sapphire jewel at the top of her staff came back to life as the invisible field around the Unkindness tried to keep her out.

But it only succeeded for a second. Her jewel began to pulse, its blue light no longer fading as it shone brighter and brighter. Amalin pushed; the field around the Unkindness expanding until she broke on through and stood before the people who, like Jeth, stared at her with dirty faces and dirty clothes.

“The Beacon helps us to find those who are dead so we can lead them out,” Amalin said. She looked up at the jewel she carried. It was now back to staying brightest blue. “The staff I hold wields its power, yet it is the Beacon which gives us Riders our strength. It finds the Pool and pierces the darkest spots in this world whenever it is not also sending the wolves away. But it does have problems when it finds too much life before it. I’m alive, so are you, and standing as close as we were caused the Beacon to fade. You don’t need to be led out of here; you are near to the Unkindness and can use it to find whatever world you once were from. As long as you are not here when the sun sets, you will be fine. I am even sure—”

“Sister,” a voice rang out. It was dry and raspy, as if it had only dead air to fill its words.

Amalin stared at one of her Riders, a man as pale and as thin as the horse he rode upon. “What?”

“The sun has almost set.”

Amalin turned her head to the horizon, Ash following her gaze. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Past where she stood was the same grey that had been around since she’d first arrived.

Ash even raised her right hand over her eyes, wincing at a sudden discomfort Jeth’s nip had—apparently—given to her. It wasn’t much pain, but it was there. She immediately dropped her arm. What she’d done hadn’t allowed her to see anything better anyway.

But for Amalin, something must have been off. She stared past the Unkindness, and over the rolling hills, before shaking her head in disgust. In fact, she gave too much energy to her disgust. Her dark black hair, braided and tied in a bun, came loose as a few locks fell around her shoulders.

“How,” she yelled. She turned back to the pale man. “We knew it was today, but—Quill, we only have an hour, maybe less.”

“Probably less,” the pale man—Quill—said. The other two Riders nodded in agreement. “When did you last have a drink?”

Amalin sighed. “You know my flask is empty, and my last drink was long before we left the Pool. If we don’t return—”

“We will,” Quill said. He looked at Amalin. Actually, all the Riders were looking at her as if they feared for her life. “Thur drank his last only two hours ago, and the Beacon will keep Fara safe no matter what, so let them take the staff and the souls, and I will ride with you. You’ll be fine.”

Amalin lifted her head, her completely blue eyes locking onto Quill with a sudden flash that made it clear why she was the one who carried the staff—something Ash had already decided must be of utmost importance. From that look, Ash knew that if Amalin ever asked her for anything, she would find it hard to say no.

“You must go,” Amalin said. “Without the Beacon, I would have to watch you turn wolf if we don’t make it. I won’t do that.”

“And without a recent sip from the Pool,” Quill said, “I’d only be watching you do the same. I don’t mind the risk.”

Amalin shook her head. “I mind.” She held up a hand—it shushed Quill who’d been about to speak. “No, you died, and you…I can’t go through that again. If I turn, I do it alone. You can have the Beacon. Just let me get a bearing on where the Pool is.”

Quill nodded. His mouth was sealed in a tight line of acceptance too, his right hand slowly rising as he pointed only at Jeth. During the entirety of their conversation, Jeth had just been looking back and forth between the two of them in stunned confusion. His expression not unlike what Ash thought she too must be wearing.

How could Jeth be alive when Ash was sure he had to be dead? And what exactly was the Pool everyone kept mentioning? Ash had so many more questions, was sent straight back to also only being confused, and it sure looked like Jeth had some questions as well.

“Go,” Quill said. He flicked a finger from Jeth to the Unkindness.

Jeth smiled. “You remember I’m here. I’m touched.”

“Just go,” Quill said, “before it’s too late.”

The smile left Jeth as he nodded and headed for the Unkindness. If he was confused like Ash was, then he was also at least like her in another regard. They both may not have understood everything Amalin and Quill were talking about, but they did know it was serious.

Jeth walked to the Unkindness and stopped just once to bend down and pick something up. It was Casten’s sword. He took it before he ignored the help Amalin was offering.

She’d gone to the edge of the Unkindness so he could get a lift. But no matter how serious he was in following Quill’s words, his desire to obey had its limits. Jeth didn’t even look at Amalin as he jumped, hit the barrier, and was thrown back.

He rolled before he shook his head and stood. “That hurt,” he sighed.

“You have the Kawshun on you,” Amalin said as her fingers still danced out for him to take.

But Jeth kept ignoring her. He only patted his shirt and slapped at the back of his legs. He just couldn’t stop trying to show how much he was working to get the gunk off his body.

“I know,” he finally said. Everything was such a failure. The Kawshun could not be defeated, but he gave it one more go. “Kind of why I’m doing this.”

“And that will never work,” Amalin said. She thrusted her hand out more forcefully. “And we…no, make that me, you, and that girl behind me, don’t have much time. Let me help.”

“Why?”

“Because, Elf,” Amalin said, “you don’t have a choice. If you were to have just gotten a little on you, say only a few fingers had touched the Kawshun or your feet had dipped lightly into one of those nearby puddles, you could come right back. This road likes to play its games. It wants the wolves to get in, so it finds ways to trick the barrier and it always allows for many to quickly jump off and then return.

“But there is no way the Unkindness could ever trick the magic of the barrier when someone is as filthy as you. Yet the Beacon can help. If I hold your hand, the Beacon will flow and cancel all the Kawshun upon you, you’ll still be dirty, but it will become regular dirt instead of the Kawshun. You can enter this road.”

Jeth rushed over. Canting quite drastically to the side, the weapon he still held truly a burden whenever it was only in one fist, he and Amalin both pulled and pushed, the blue flowing down her staff and encircling him as the barrier expanded until he finally broke through. Jeth stepped onto the Unkindness, smiling as Amalin walked away and turned her eyes back towards the sapphire jewel.

“Why are you happy,” she asked. She still looked only at the gem that had once more begun to fade even though it also appeared to be pulsing slightly in its perch.

“Just excited to be back to normal,” Jeth said. “I fell into this world and wandered until one day something happened, and all I felt was rage.”

Amalin nodded. “You became wolf.” The Beacon was pulsing harder as she began to move further from him. “It must have been during the last sunset over six hundred years ago.”

“Six hundred,” Jeth said. “It couldn’t have…I…”

Amalin smiled. It looked weird on her. “Long time for an Elf to actually feel,” she said. “You guys don’t like emotions, do you?”

Jeth shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

“Just drink in the people nearby,” Amalin said. The pulse of the Beacon slowed. She took her eyes off it as the smile fell from her lips. “Do you see how they are?”

Ash and Jeth turned to the group, Jeth seeing them way more clearly than Ash since he was closer, but Ash got the gist of what Amalin was trying to say. Those folks had once yelled like mad men, but now they were quiet. Unlike Jeth’s ready and willing behavior, they had become more and more withdrawn as time had gone by.

“They are also remembering how it felt to be wolf,” Amalin explained, “the rage, the anger, the pure hate they had when they ran on all fours—and they are ashamed. They look to have been human once, and if that is the case, then they know what it was like to feel, to accept emotion and keep it in check, and they are horrified to realize that when they were wolf, they easily became the animals they’d often denied themselves from being.

“But you are Elf, you bury emotion, and so I wonder, did you like what you felt, Mr. Jeth? Is that why you’re smiling? The others are disgusted by what was in their hearts, but you loved it didn’t you? It must have been the first time you let yourself go.”

Jeth didn’t answer. He merely dropped his smile as the Beacon finally stopped pulsing. Instantly, Amalin threw her staff at another Rider, the other male who wasn’t Quill.

“You know I can’t wield this as good as you,” that other Rider said. The Beacon was as bright as it had ever been, but the guy was right. It looked off, as if more of it were now alive.

“You won’t carry it for long,” Amalin said, “when the sun sets, the Beacon will glow all by itself, just keep Fara and Quill close. You keep them right at your side, Thur, and the souls, too, if they haven’t yet crossed. The pulse told me where the Pool is. I will be there. Go.”

Amalin turned and pointed at all the people who now had their heads shyly bowed behind her. “All of you, go!”

It was her loudest command yet, and every single person who had once been wolf instantly did as Jeth had done. They reacted, and they reacted quick. Each of them rushed off the Unkindness and took an arm of a Rider. Soon, the Kawshun horses got more weight put upon their backs, and when everyone was up, first the one with the staff—who was Thur…obviously—and then the other female Rider (who had to be Fara…Ash knew that that was pretty obvious too) turned their horses towards the horizon.

“I’ll see you at the Pool,” Quill said.

He also turned his horse but did it quite slow, his eyes staying on Amalin for as long as possible. He even—but only briefly—eyed the blade that Jeth had hold of before his horse was finally off. He overtook the other two Riders and was beyond the farthest hill in a matter of seconds.

“What about me,” Jeth asked.

Amalin pointed to Ash. “There is a window behind that girl,” she said.

Ash, for some reason, waved a nice hello—she was so much like her Poppa Henry—before she turned. Poppa Henry was no longer on his knees or standing up. He was sitting with his head down and his hands covering his face.

“Are,” Ash asked. Maybe she shouldn’t have ignored that moan? “Are you okay?”

“He,” her Poppa Henry was crying, yet laughing too. What was wrong with him? “I,” Poppa Henry finally choked out. “I just never thought…he was here the whole time, stuck in this god forsaken world, and…I just never expected this.”

He laughed and cried some more, Ash not sure what she should do or how she could ever make him feel any better. She turned away. It probably wasn’t the best choice to make, but it was a return to normal—no running to save anyone, just avoidance—so it didn’t come as a surprise. She put her attention back on to Amalin and Jeth.

“We have to go through glass,” Jeth said. “You know the magic to do that?”

“Don’t you,” Amalin asked. She stopped in front of Ash and smiled again. It still looked odd on her. Not bad or fake, just as if smiling was something she only did in forgotten dreams. “I thought all Elves knew such spells?”

As close as she was now, Ash could at last see her fully. Amalin was as beautiful as the jewel she’d just gotten rid of.

She was covered head to toe in the dirt of the Kawshun, but, regardless, her beauty still shone through. In a cleaner world, it would have been more amplified, her angular and radiant cheeks a soft white, her fully blue eyes—so otherworldly—just plain stunning. Amalin had eyes that were a complete and vivid color, somehow wise and knowing, yet also simply blue and glowing. Whenever she blinked, a slight halo would vanish from around her face.

But no matter the strangeness of what she looked at you with—and no matter the dirt covering her or how it must have been quite a while since she’d let a grin find its way to her face—she was beyond words. Her long black hair helped as did the way she carried herself—just looking at her made you feel safe—and Ash could tell. Amalin held something, a kind of allure. Ash could see how if she’d been in any other place, Amalin would have immediately been the center of attention—the kind of woman that dazzled royal courts and dignitaries from afar.

As for Jeth, he wasn’t that bad either. In a way, up close, he reminded Ash of Casten, all lithe and tall with sinewy muscles and not a trace of anything soft. Jeth was dirtier than Amalin, but he too had echoes of what he might have been like outside this world. He seemed strong and full of energy, his ready acceptance and the smile Ash had noticed earlier, mixing in perfect with some dark green eyes to let her know he was a survivor—someone it would take a whole heck of a lot to knock down.

More of her grandfather’s stories came back—ones about the Nomen and the Errun—as everything her Poppa Henry had ever told her about Jeth suddenly made much more sense. It was no wonder that after he’d been a wolf for six hundred years, he was able to argue with some Rider the second he was free.

“And who are—” Amalin began, still smiling at Ash until she caught sight of Casten and let her voice drift.

She dropped down to check him out, and as she went, Ash realized that Jeth too was discovering his own shock. He stared up and over Ash’s shoulder as another smile returned to his face, this one larger and warmer than any before.

“Henry,” Jeth said, “is that you?”

Ash turned to see how her Poppa Henry would react. Was he on his feet? Was he now only laughing instead of crying? She wanted to watch as two old friends reconnected but she never got the chance. Her shoulder suddenly flared with a horrible pain. Maybe the bite Jeth had given was not so insignificant after all.

*Chapter Twenty-Four*

“Did you hurt her?”

It was Amalin. She was talking to someone, yelling at them really, when Ash opened her eyes.

When had she closed them? And why was she lying on the Unkindness, each damp slab she was on already soaking every inch of her back. Ash turned and saw Casten to her left—still out of it yet flipped over and on his back as well.

His cloak…someone had taken it off before tearing it to shreds. Why had that happened?

Ash blinked; her eyes were fuzzy—her shoulder still hurt too. Maybe that was why things weren’t making much sense.

There was a stretch of green cloth along Casten’s leg, she saw that now. It was a bandage, and another much larger bit was covering the wound at Casten’s stomach. That’s why his cloak had been torn to shreds.

But it wasn’t enough. Ash tried to sit up. What was wrong with her eyes—more questions to plague her mind, so nice—and why was the world spinning? Ash even felt quite weak—which was most likely what was causing the world to tilt even more—yet for some reason none of that was a concern as she only kept going back to one thing: seriously, what had happened to the rest of Casten’s cloak?

“I don’t remember,” Jeth said. Ash saw him nervously pacing back and forth near to the pane her Poppa Henry was in.

She wanted to laugh. When she found her Poppa Henry, he was so worried. He was crouched over. He wasn’t on his knees anymore—he was standing and was pressed against the window with his palms splayed so they shone quite white. Ash didn’t know how he was keeping himself stable. Already, with the few times she’d seen him touching glass, it had usually started to ripple the moment he’d put a finger on it.

But this time, he had his hands up, yet he wasn’t falling out. He looked so odd, but it wasn’t only him she found hilarious. Coach Littleton and Freddy King were still there too. They were walking towards the glass, yet how they were doing that—like exaggerated versions of someone trying to show what slow motion was like—was too ridiculous to believe. The Unkindness really was having a blast with another one of its tricks.

“How can you not know,” Poppa Henry asked.

Instantly, Ash lost all interest in everything that wasn’t her grandfather. His awe and wonderment—pretty much every bit of the laughing and crying he’d been doing—was gone. He was only livid now.

“I should have known,” Poppa Henry continued to rage. “Of course, you hurt her! You bit her! You’ve killed her!”

That got Ash to stop slowly rising. She stood up in a hurry as Amalin, who’d been over at Casten’s leg, rushed to her side.

But it was only when she almost fell back down—the Unkindness swaying beneath her—that Ash finally figured out where the rest of Casten’s cloak had gone. To keep her balance, she grabbed for Amalin’s wrist, and when she did, she felt the movement of a thick and heavy bandage, one sticky and wet and wrapped tightly over where she’d been bit.

Ash shook her head to make the world stop spinning. She got the Unkindness to come back to some level of normalcy too as she also brought her left hand over to her right shoulder.

The wound was wrong, and when she touched her shoulder, the fingers of her left hand found a bandage almost as large as the one on Casten’s stomach. Except, this bandage was as soaked as her back, and when Ash lifted her fingers to her face, she understood why. Her hand was coated in something gooey and black as night.

“Don’t say that” Amalin sighed. She even nodded reassuringly at Ash as she did. “Don’t say this girl could die. That isn’t necessarily the case.”

“How is it not,” Poppa Henry asked. “I know this road, and when sunset occurs here, anyone who holds the bite of a wolf instantly becomes wolf without any chance of ever coming back! They turn with no sword being able to cut them free! Am I wrong?”

Amalin looked inquisitively from Poppa Henry to Jeth. “Who are you,” she said, “and how do you know him, Elf? How do you know anyone who has dared to make themselves into a Reflection?”

Jeth stopped pacing. He’d been walking with Casten’s sword still held in his hands, the weapon remaining so heavy but he hadn’t yet found a way to let it go. He was only latching onto it all the tighter with fingers gone a stark white around the knuckles.

“I can’t remember everything that happened to me when I was wolf,” he said. He looked only at Poppa Henry. “But I can recall the emotion, the hate, and the anger I had long before I was changed. I’d been through so much, only to fall into this wretched land, and I was furious. That I do remember. I could have bitten your daughter.”

“Granddaughter,” Poppa Henry said.

“Of course,” Jeth quickly added, “granddaughter. I could have bitten her. I probably did bite her because Amalin was right. I did spend a good portion of my youth learning how to deny my emotions. I may not have finished the training that all Littles learn, but I learned enough, and when I was in this world, I enjoyed the rage I found. I can’t believe I might have killed your granddaughter.”

Amalin took a step towards Jeth. “Stop saying that! I can do a lot for this girl, but I want to know who that man is who stands in that window! He is a Reflection, and I know what that means! How do you know him?”

“Which brings me to you,” Jeth said, “that man is my friend. I don’t know how he became a Reflection—the last I saw of him I didn’t even know he had any magical abilities. But I do know that Henry is good, very good, and if he somehow attained what many an Elf is never able to do, then I am sure he had a reason for it. There is no way he took a life to become a Reflection.”

Amalin nodded slowly. “Henry,” she said, “is a very dangerous name.”

Ash’s head began to spin even faster. She was trying to listen to the conversation, but it kept slipping. The fingers she had around Amalin’s wrist were the only things keeping her upright.

“Well,” Jeth pointed at Poppa Henry. “He isn’t dangerous. He’s as decent as they come.”

Amalin rolled her electric eyes. “Decency is earned,” she sighed, “not freely given, and the creation of a Reflection means the casting of a spell which calls for the use of a life. I cannot abide—”

“And you are right,” Poppa Henry said before Amalin could finish. “I did take a life.”

“What,” Jeth said. “But…Henry, you’re older, but I know you. You’re not a murderer.”

Poppa Henry smiled. “And neither are you. I didn’t set out to take a life, in fact, I was so sure I had found a way around that part, but just to be certain, I set up safeguards so that if a life had to be used, it would only be my own that was taken. I died so I could get back and help Penthya.”

“And what’s wrong with Penthya,” Jeth asked.

It was Ash’s turn to talk. The world around her wouldn’t stop tilting no matter what she did. “Why am I going to die,” she asked.

Poppa Henry looked her way. “My Little Ash,” he said. “I shouldn’t have yelled that. I…I’m just worried, but…but you’ll be okay. You said she’d be okay, right?”

He turned to Amalin. “If I can get her to the Pool,” Amalin nodded, “everything will be fine.”

“But why don’t we go through the window Henry is in,” Jeth asked. “We step on through, and we don’t have to worry about any sunset.”

Poppa Henry’s eyes, Amalin’s too, went wide with shock—or fear, Ash wasn’t sure. “That won’t work,” they both yelled, their voices overlapping before Poppa Henry closed his mouth and held up his hands in apology.

“Okay,” Jeth said after a moment’s pause, “and why is that?”

“Because of the girl,” Amalin alone explained, “but also because of the Elf that is hurt. If we take this child back to her world, she won’t become wolf, but she will die due to the poison now coursing through her veins. Also, in whatever world is past that mirror, I doubt they will be able to understand how to fix an Elf. The Pool is all that can heal those that have been on the Unkindness. If this Elf had fallen onto the Kawshun, there would be nothing we could do for him. But he is here, he is on the very same road where you bit this girl, and we can save them. Yet—”

Amalin trailed off as Ash swayed more and more, the Unkindness feeling as if it were collapsing and taking her with it. She buckled, Amalin cradling her in her arms as she began to walk to the one Kawshun horse that remained nearby.

“Yet what,” Jeth finally asked. He stayed on the Unkindness as Amalin quickly scampered off that road. She threw Ash over the front of the horse.

Ash was drifting. Her shoulder was burning again. It was taking her down into something hot and filled with an all-consuming rage. Yet she could still feel and hear the world with ease.

The rough hide of the Kawshun horse was dusty, and dry, and horribly worn. It seemed those creatures were covered in nothing but ragged flesh that felt beyond spent, more decayed than alive, and to top it off, their flesh was razor thin. To Ash, it was more like she’d been placed upon a horribly sharp skeleton rather than something alive.

“My horse is fast, very fast,” Ash heard Amalin say before she also felt how Amalin was trying to make sure she was truly stable. “But if I want it to reach its top speed,” Amalin went on, “it can’t carry too much life upon it. Just as it is with the Beacon, too much of the living can affect a Kawshun horse, and if I take her and the injured Elf, none of us will make it. I must leave him behind, and that means I must also leave everything else behind. You, however, can step through the window your Henry is in.”

Amalin put her hands behind Ash and leapt onto the back of the horse. There were no reins—no saddle either. There was just a long and stringy white mane that had already been mostly matted down. Ash briefly saw Amalin grab as much of it as she could before she turned the horse around.

“The Pool is over there,” Jeth asked.

“Yes,” Amalin said, “it’s beyond that hill, why?”

“Because I’m coming with you.”

“You’ll never make it.”

“In all my time here,” Jeth said, “and long before I turned wolf, running fast was not something I had to worry about. I can carry that Elf.”

Amalin stared at him. “I don’t have the Beacon. You step off the Unkindness, you won’t be going back.”

“I know,” Jeth said. “Now go!”

*Chapter Twenty-Five*

Ash was angry. She didn’t know why or what was causing it, but the fury in her soul was quickly becoming the only thing she cared about.

She squeezed her eyes tight. In the dark, her rage was alive—a substantial form coming closer and closer with each passing second. She couldn’t wait for it to arrive.

But then, so sudden, something cold and electric sparked past her lips. Ash couldn’t describe the sensation of what she was drinking any other way. The horse she’d been on had been uncomfortable to an unimaginable degree, its bones rolling and rising with each step the animal took. Yet Ash had gotten used to that. The jarring beat of such hard hooves upon such wet ground had created a rhythm she may not have liked, but it had been a rhythm that, once listened to, had become ordinary. Ash had been able to push every bad sensation into the back of her mind, which was why it had been such a shock when something strange, and filled with a current of great power, had made its way down her throat.

Ash swallowed and choked. She got some of the liquid down yet lost a good portion of it too when she tried to sit up. She’d been taken off the Kawshun horse. When had that happened?

“Easy, easy,” Amalin said. She cupped the back of Ash’s head as she cradled her tight. “We are by the Pool, and I have had my sip before giving you my flask. Everything is fine.”

Ash finally opened her eyes. She stared only at Amalin, losing herself inside twin currents of deepest blue that were all that Amalin had to look right back at her. It was scary.

She didn’t want her eyes to be like that. She didn’t want to be held by some wild woman either. Ash was angrier than she had ever been in her whole life—all her emotions also focused only onto Amalin. She wanted to hit and bite until Amalin screamed in the same amount of rage she was feeling.

“Get off me,” Ash howled. She writhed in Amalin’s grasp, Amalin clamping down and drawing her closer. “Let me go!”

Amalin only smiled. Ash was snapping and whipping around, and Amalin just let a wide grin play across her lips. It still looked odd.

They were near to a wide lake of glowing blue. It had to be the Pool, something easily reachable if Amalin were to simply turn with the smallest of efforts, but she ignored it and only let her smile drop when Ash finally paused to gather her strength.

“I have spent countless centuries in this world,” Amalin sighed, “and I know well that the Kawshun and the Unkindness do love to play their games, speeding up everything you left behind, or slowing it down if they find that to be more fun. This place does it all so you’re never quite sure how much time has passed in the life you abandoned, yet, most often, the Kawshun and the Unkindness torture you by moving at a pace you can’t begin to imagine. Once they know you’re here for good—and trust me they both can know that very well—they make it so everything moves far too quick.

“I have been here for a while, and maybe in the world I left things haven’t aged that much but for me they have. Don’t think me a fool, little girl, and don’t you dare think I haven’t seen it all. You’re angry, the poison in you is making you fill with a rage you can’t believe, and a part of you likes it, I know you like it, but I won’t let you fall into it. You can struggle all you want, but I will keep you here and you will drink from my flask. Whether I force it on you or you take it willingly, you will drink from my flask.”

Amalin scooted more comfortably onto the Kawshun. She’d been kneeling with her legs underneath her and Ash held securely at her waist, but she hefted Ash up so she could push her legs out. She sighed again, this time in contentment, her left arm all she needed to keep Ash on her lap.

“I can sit here forever,” Amalin said, “and I really have drunk enough to keep me fine when the sun goes down.” She shook her flask back and forth, Ash now unable to look anywhere else but at it. “Are you going to drink?”

“My eyes,” Ash said. She went limp in Amalin’s arm. It would do no good to fight. Amalin was too strong. “Will drinking…I don’t want my eyes to be like yours.”

Amalin laughed. “Oh sweetie,” she said as she brought the flask back to Ash’s lips. Ash sipped from it slowly, then greedily—every drop sparking so strong down her throat. It was quenching her rage. “You can’t get eyes like mine unless you drink from the Pool for years, hundreds of years, and by then, you’ll be so saturated you won’t care how it changes you.”

Ash kept sipping. The blue really did taste like a current of living energy, Ash now beyond sure she was drinking a source of power not unlike what gave life to the lights in her house or the computers at her school.

When Amalin finally took the flask away, Ash even made a feeble attempt at protesting, but such cries were lost when Amalin clamped down hard upon her. She threw her flask to her side, and hurriedly squeezed until Ash felt as if all the air were about to slip from her lungs.

A seizure hit. Her shoulder no longer oozed something black. It no longer burned with pain either. Instead, it felt utterly ripped apart, an agony so great Ash couldn’t deal with it for long. She passed out, expecting only that soon her whole arm would be somewhere off to the side, lost along the Kawshun, when she woke.

But when she did wake, and—yet again—opened her eyes, Ash found that both her arms, and both her hands, and all her fingers and her two shoulders, were still there. She sat up and inspected her body further. The bandage from Casten’s cloak had been taken away as well, that bundle of cloth discarded and set next to her. There wasn’t even a trace of any bite on her—the black ooze coming out of her gone too. It was a miracle.

“So, without a recent drink from the Pool,” Jeth was saying. When had he arrived? “And as saturated by all the blue as you clearly are, you would have still turned wolf?”

Ash turned. Jeth was standing next to Amalin with Casten lying on the Kawshun near to them both. It was impressive. Jeth really had been able to run so fast.

“If you’re a living person on the Kawshun,” Amalin said, “then yes. The rare nightfall is too powerful, and any long ago blue won’t do. It must be a recent sip, something only a few hours old, even if that sip comes from a container like my flask.”

“You mean the flask you forgot to fill the last time you were here?”

Amalin sighed as she held her flask up before her. “Yes, that one,” she said. She’d already retrieved the thing from the Kawshun. Ash watched as Amalin even bent down to refill it before she stood and tucked it beneath the shirt she wore. “And, trust me, I won’t be forgetting about anything anymore. Sometimes Kawshun horses quit on you, and since I can’t go as fast as an Elf, I will never again be caught without the blue. Where did you learn to run like that?”

Ash had been moved—or had the seizure moved her—and Jeth and Amalin seemed content to let her be as they both stood much closer to the Pool and its soft halo of light. Everywhere else was dark, an endless black that couldn’t be breached no matter how hard Ash stared.

It was the sunset. Ash had never been in a night this complete.

“Running fast is something all Elves can do,” Jeth said.

He knelt on the Kawshun too before scooping up as much of the blue as he could. He took a good long drink, and when he was done, he grabbed another handful. But this time, he turned to Casten. He made sure some got to him as well.

“I’ve never forgotten being a Little in the Centaur Woods,” Jeth said once he was done with Casten. He even turned back to Amalin and smiled. “But what I really remember is how every Elf I ever met was always able to run almost as fast as the wind. I guess it’s just a talent we have.”

Amalin peered at him, a sudden interest burning across her face as she took a slight step to her rear to calm her Kawshun horse. That beast must have also been enjoying the Pool, or perhaps it had been further off doing whatever it was that emaciated pale horses did in this world, for Ash hadn’t seen it until now. It nuzzled Amalin with its thin snout. But Amalin never took her eyes off Jeth as she quieted it.

“You are from Penthya, when?”

“What do you mean, when,” Jeth asked.

“I mean, when were you last there?”

“In Penthya?”

“Did I say another place?”

“No,” Jeth said. He stood up, and wiped his hands on his long shirt, before he sighed and let the smile drop from his face. “But I don’t know when last I was there,” he confessed. “I was captured by Nomen scouts who’d ventured into the Marsh of Lumbrica to check on the lay of the land during the earliest days of Vensue’s Outrage. Prince Denthro was still just a Little himself, and things seemed on the verge of another Civil War, so the Nomen, like the Errun, were curious as to how that weakness could be exploited. I was made a slave just a few days after my ninetieth birthday, and that was the last I saw of Penthya until I entered, once more, very briefly, into the Lumbrica.”

Amalin turned her attention to her horse. “You don’t look to be ninety.”

“Actually, I’m older. I think I celebrated my four hundredth not too long before I found myself here.”

Amalin stroked the mane of her horse, yet also cast another sideways glance at Jeth. “But” she said, “you just told me you left Penthya when you were ninety and no one ages in the Kawshun or on the Unkindness. They either cross or they become wolf.”

“I said I left Penthya when I was but ninety,” Jeth explained. He faced Amalin—let himself be judged. “Never said I left the world Penthya is in when I was ninety. I was taken by the Nomen and was their slave in the Ferrousai for over three centuries before I escaped. I fled with the help of the man who was in the glass that hung on that grey wall, and when I finally did make it back into Penthya, I was captured by the Errun in the Lumbrica. Really, I think that that marsh might not be the best spot for me to visit.”

“Why were you in the Lumbrica?”

“First time or second?”

“First.”

“My father was a Lord of a noble Elf house and had been sent by King Ethoc to strike an accord with a Wiggan Tribal. I went with him.”

“How about the second?”

Amalin was starting to believe. It was obvious to Ash who watched from afar, but it was clear that it was even more obvious to Jeth. He nodded before turning. He looked back down at Casten, that Elf suddenly something of renewed interest as Jeth knelt to check on his injuries.

“He is healing,” Jeth said, “but it is taking him much longer than it did for that girl. Why?”

Ash had to get closer. She had to hear the answer to Jeth’s question almost as much as he did. She was cured, right?

“My Little Ash,” Poppa Henry said. But his voice was muffled. It was coming from under her red shirt. “Are you alright?”

Amalin and Jeth hadn’t yet noticed her. Ash was close enough to catch anything they might say, but both still had their backs to her as she stopped to pull out her mirror. It was lying against her white undershirt, and as soon as it was free, the blue from the Pool flickered onto the glass. Her Poppa Henry really was still with her. Everything was fine.

“I’m okay,” Ash said. “What did they do to me?”

“I don’t know,” Poppa Henry said. “I’ve always known of the Unkindness and the Kawshun, but I never dared to try and spend much time here. That woman, however, the one with the blue eyes, she seems to know this world well and, if that is the case, then she must be a Rider of some experience. Ask her.”

“Oh,” Ash said. She dropped the mirror down to her chest, yet made sure its glass front was aimed towards Amalin and Jeth so her grandfather could easily hear and see them. “But do you really think she will know everything?”

Poppa Henry sighed. “Of course,” he said, “there’s no way she could talk like she has without knowing.”

“Oh, okay,” Ash agreed, and that did make sense. “But maybe we should be quiet. She might be about to say more.”

But her Poppa Henry wouldn’t be quiet. “And” actually, he was being rather loud, so annoying, “and she looks familiar,” he went on. “Not the eyes, I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like hers. Still, her face—she seems like someone I should know.”

Ash gave her mirror a shake. “Poppa Henry, hush.”

Her grandfather finally went silent as Amalin ambled slowly to Jeth. The night was breaking; a touch of grey entering what had been pure dark only a moment before. With the coming light, her horse was put at ease—Amalin was free to tap Jeth on his shoulder.

“Tell me why you were in the marsh the second time you got captured.”

Jeth stood up yet again. He let his inspection of Casten come to an end as he got back to looking just at Amalin.

“No,” he said, “you tell me why this Elf is not yet completely healed. His wounds are smaller, but he is not better, while that girl is already on her feet.”

Jeth waved at Ash, she should have known she wouldn’t be able to go unnoticed for long. Trying to sneak up had been rather silly.

“This girl was injured on the Unkindness,” Amalin explained, “and as I have already said, any wound on that road can be fixed by the Pool. But I should have further added that if any injury actually happens on the Unkindness, then the fixing of that injury will occur a bit faster. Your Elf friend will be fine, but he was obviously attacked off that highway. Why are you concerned?”

“Because” Jeth said. He pointed to a belt that was around Casten’s waist. “I think he might be family.”

Like the belts the other Rider’s had worn, Ash had—once more—not yet seen something she probably should have already taken note of. Still, it was a rather slender and tiny belt, and it also was as brown and as leathery as Casten’s pants, so maybe it wasn’t too much of a surprise she’d missed it.

Yet what Jeth was pointing to now was the one spot Ash knew she shouldn’t have overlooked. A small and circular red medallion—with a tiny black phoenix burnt right into it—was there. It was something lying at the center of Casten’s belt. It was also just under the tip of Casten’s sword. Before he’d taken off for his run, Jeth must have returned that weapon to its rightful owner.

“The crest, that phoenix, it’s my family crest,” Jeth said. Amalin leaned over to see what it was he was talking about. “It is the crest of House Ethallis, the crest of King Ethoc himself, and it means this Elf could be my Prince, my King, or he could be a cousin. Whatever the case, I must make sure he’s fine.”

“He will be,” Amalin said. She locked Jeth into her steady, blue-filled gaze. “Now answer me, why were you in the Marsh of Lumbrica when you got caught the second time?”

“My fault,” Poppa Henry spoke up from his position inside Ash’s mirror. Amalin and Jeth looked her way, but it took Ash pointing at the mirror for them to finally nod in understanding.

Jeth laughed as he walked over. “So that is what you meant when you said you could follow. What else can you do as a Reflection?”

“He answers me, not you,” Amalin said.

She didn’t get any closer to Ash. Instead, she made her way back to her horse as a tiny speck of blue, something not the Pool and way off in the distance, began to become noticeable just past the grey of the horizon.

“And what would you like for me to answer,” Poppa Henry asked.

“Why were you in the marsh,” Amalin said. “The second time.”

“Because I wanted to get out of the Ferrousai as quickly as possible,” Poppa Henry explained, “and Jeth took me to the Lumbrica rather than taking a much longer route which would have led us straight into the Centaur Woods. I was so ready to leave that desert I pushed him into it. I told him we had to get out of the heat, but as soon as we were over the cliffs, we got caught, and when we finally did reach the Centaur Woods, it was in the dead of night, and we were in chains—the Errun who took us not letting us make a sound; they were quite worried we would alert the Elves or the Centaurs to their presence.”

Amalin nodded. “And what happened next?”

“For Jeth or for me?”

“Both.”

“Well,” Poppa Henry began, “Jeth somehow fell into this world, while I finally made it into Penthya and got married.”

Got married? In Penthya? Ash paused to digest that fact. Had her Grandma Ash been Penthyan? That would be so cool.

“You got married,” Jeth said. “When, where, how?”

“I did say the girl who holds my mirror is my granddaughter,” Poppa Henry said. “Did you think I had her father out of wedlock?”

Jeth laughed again. “Never gave it a thought—should have though. Well, much belated congrats! Who was the lucky lady?”

“Isabella Denthro,” Poppa Henry said.

Ash blinked hard and almost reached for the mirror at her chest. She wanted to pull at it, maybe shake it a little too. What was her Poppa Henry talking about?

Her Grandma Ash had died long before she’d been born, but her name had been Whitney. And Isabella Denthro had been a princess—a woman from a story. How could her Poppa Henry…or was he…but that couldn’t be, could it?

Was her Poppa Henry the mystery husband he’d always refused to name? Now Ash really wanted to go for her mirror. Maybe yank it to her face and ask it every question that was consuming her.

But her hands never made it to the blue around her neck. Amalin howled in rage before jumping onto her horse. She took every thought straight from Ash’s mind.

“I knew it,” Amalin yelled. She was already digging her heels into her horse, that beast aimed only towards the horizon and the blue light that was still there. “You’re a Reflection! Your name is Henry! But I was too worried about that girl and—and about the coming nightfall!”

Ash and Jeth stayed where they were. Too stunned to move, they just bore witness to the sight of Amalin. The dark was almost completely gone, and so was she, her Kawshun horse moving at a speed that was stunning.

“What was that about,” Jeth asked. He finally blinked, even shook his head, before he stared back at the blue mirror.

“I think she thinks I killed King Denthro,” Poppa Henry quickly added.

“Wait,” Jeth said slowly, as if to clarify. “Denthro…he became a king—and he’s dead?”

“Yes, but I didn’t kill him. You have to believe me.”

Jeth sighed. “I already stood up for you once. I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“Good,” Poppa Henry said, “that will help in case you need to use that sword over there.”

“And why would I need that?”

“To protect yourself and my Little Ash,” Poppa Henry said. Amalin was a dot on the horizon, yet she was a dot that had stopped right beside the blue light that was much closer. “When those Riders arrive, they might pull out their own weapons. I need for you to be ready to do the same.”

*Chapter Twenty-Six*

Jeth leaned over and took hold of the blade lying across Casten’s’ chest. It was a struggle for him to rise.

Finally getting upright, Ash watched as he studied a gleam in the sword before he cast a quick glance back onto the speck of blue that was way off in the distance. Except, it was no longer a speck. When Ash followed his gaze, she found that the blue was now a large and ominous glow on the top of a staff that was way too close for her liking.

Jeth sighed. “I can’t.” He gave one last effort to lift the sword, but he barely got anywhere before he dropped his arm. “Too heavy.”

“What,” Ash asked. She headed his way. “What do you mean?”

Jeth bent again. The tip of the sword fell deep into the Kawshun as he rested upon its hilt.

“Too heavy,” he said, “sorry.”

“But it wasn’t heavy for me.”

Ash grabbed at the hilt, Jeth not protesting in the slightest. He stepped away with a shrug as Ash lifted the sword—so very high—with the smallest of efforts.

Suddenly, there was something in her mind. It hadn’t been there before. Granted, before she’d only held the thing for a second—and a terrifying wolf had been bearing down on her too…she might have missed a few things—but now a whisper was definitely there. It made her feel as if this sword was an extension of her body.

Ash lowered her arms before twirling what was in her hands. This sword could sing—that something in her mind only a chorus of greatest confidence. It let Ash know she wouldn’t fail with this—be afraid or not understand what was going on around her—because this sword would one day make her perfect.

And it also must have made her look quite impressive. Jeth stepped further away in shock as Ash heard her grandfather gasp in surprise.

“Ash,” Poppa Henry said once he’d recovered, “what’s going on?”

“I,” Ash said. She could hear the chorus as it gently moved her arms. “I don’t know. The sword is—it’s talking to me!”

Poppa Henry shook her mirror. Actually, he made it dance—a crazy twist and lurch as it thumped up and down on Ash’s chest.

“Let it go,” he yelled. “Ash, when I handled that thing, it never spoke! If it has a presence, you need to drop it!”

Ash stopped throwing the sword around as she noticed that the Riders had come to a halt. They were still a few feet away and looked worried, but it was obvious their worry would only last for a second. There was no way they weren’t getting closer.

Jeth faced her blue mirror. “Don’t,” he was talking to Ash, yet he stared only at Poppa Henry. “Don’t let that sword out of your grasp.”

“She is my granddaughter!” Poppa Henry shouted back. “She doesn’t need to listen to you!”

“But you do,” Jeth said. He pointed over his shoulder to the Riders who were once more on the move. “I’m sure Amalin has already spurred everyone on with tales of the murder she thinks you committed, and if the way she acted is any indication, those Riders will be mad. But your Ash has a connection to that injured Elf’s sword, and she may be our best chance at defending ourselves.

“I can use that blade, but not for long. When I tried to run with it and carry that Elf, I could barely move. I almost didn’t make it to the Pool, and I only somehow lightened the sword by putting it back into the hands of that Elf. But Ash throws it around as if it were a tiny stick. Let her have it.”

“To fight four Riders by herself,” Poppa Henry said. His face was pressed up to the blue mirrors glass. That must have been how he’d made it dance. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Who ever said she’d be by herself,” Jeth asked as he turned back around. His hands were starting to glow red, a bright crimson that seemed to intensify whenever he also whispered something Ash couldn’t quite catch. “After all,” he chuckled, “I do know quite a few spells of disarmament. How could you forget that?”

Poppa Henry sighed as the mirror went still. Ash was certain she could keep hold of the sword with only a few fingers, it was so light maybe a mere two would be all that would be needed. She let everything sway as she lifted the mirror with her now free hand so she could get a good look at her grandfather.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

“You’re sure,” Poppa Henry asked.

“Positive, but can you help too?”

“Maybe.” His voice was still there for Ash to hear, but his face had left the mirror. Where had he gone?

The Riders arrived. They came to a stop in front of Ash and Jeth, Amalin looking at Quill who nodded first her way and then at the one called Thur who flung to Amalin the staff. She grabbed it while sliding off her horse, hitting the Kawshun gracefully with Quill a step behind.

His ivory sword, a blade that seemed quite sharp from where Ash stood, was out and pointing at Jeth. But Amalin didn’t care about what Quill was interested in. She only had eyes for Ash.

“Give up, Henry,” she commanded, “no Trial, no judgments, let me see his face so I can use the Beacon to send the rest of his soul to where most of him has already gone!”

Again, Ash was drawn to Amalin’s eyes. No longer did the color—which gained in intensity along with the glow of the Beacon—appear strange. What was odd was merely how Amalin was the only Rider who had eyes like that. She was as dirty as the other three, yet while Thur had bits of the Pool in him, he still had other colors, some white and a bit of black, in his eyes, while Amalin held nothing but a complete and unending blue.

And then there was Quill. He couldn’t stop staring at Jeth, his sword ready for whatever the Elf might send. Ash could tell that he and the other Rider—the one Ash still thought had to be Fara—didn’t have a trace of blue anywhere on them. Sure, Quill and Fara’s skin was just as sickly pale as Amalin’s and Thur’s, but Quill’s eyes were brown and Fara’s were a very pretty shade of green.

They were different from Amalin, even Thur was different, and though for Fara and Thur any difference could be explained away, Ash was finding it hard to do that with Quill. His eyes she could understand, hadn’t Amalin said it took years of drinking from the Pool to make them change, but his angular face—more oriental in nature then Amalin’s—was a difference Ash couldn’t quite fathom.

Still, Quill had called Amalin “sister,” didn’t that mean they were family? Yet as Ash let the other two Riders go and studied Quill, all she could think was he didn’t look like he could ever be kin to Amalin.

“Henry stays with us,” Jeth said, “however, you can come get him if you would like.”

He began to whisper again—one word that Ash, this time, just barely caught. It sounded like “Proqin,” but she wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that Jeth’s hands were back to glowing—first softly but then strong; the red which flowed around his wrists becoming a glare so bright Ash lost where his fingers were.

“You do know some magic,” Amalin said. She cast a quick glance Jeth’s way. “But a mere spell of disarmament won’t have any effect on a Rider. We hold weapons of the Kawshun, my brother’s sword, and Fara and Thur’s swords, were made from bones willingly given by their horses. Casting any charm onto them, onto a section of living death, won’t have much of an impact.”

Ash looked past Amalin’s shoulder. So far, Thur and Fara were staying on their horses yet they too already had their own weapons out, their blades of bone just as shiny and as bright as Quill’s. They were even smiling like Quill was, so sure that neither she nor Jeth could do them any harm, but Ash was ready to prove them wrong.

There was still that something in her mind—that song, or maybe just a warm and gentle calm, which increased whenever she moved the sword she held into just the right position. It truly was like there was an entity inside her, not a bad one as her Poppa Henry had feared, but one of good intent that could see through her eyes. Her sword knew what she had to do to stay protected.

Ash put two hands back around the hilt before slowly flicking her sword up. Not all the way, just a bit as she also brought it out in front of her. She even took her eyes off the Riders behind Amalin and stared only at the Beacon. Its harsh and steady pulse was something she suddenly knew was of utmost importance.

Thur laughed. “The Little is ready for a fight,” he peered over Amalin and down at Ash. “Does she believe that while we hesitated from afar because of her, we will do that again?”

“Maybe she does believe,” Amalin said. She didn’t turn to Thur. She kept her attention only on Ash.

It came in a flash, something so quick there was no way Ash could have ever been ready. But her sword was ready. A ball of light—a sphere of crackling blue—erupted out of the Beacon, the thing most assuredly able to knock Ash out, kill her, or just send her hurtling off the Kawshun if her sword hadn’t reacted much faster than the sphere could fly.

That warm and gentle calm increased to an urgency Ash was compelled to comply with. As soon as the Beacon shot, she flicked her sword over into just the right position, her arms moving quicker than she thought possible. The sphere hit nothing but silver and black dotted steel before bouncing away. It barely missed Jeth as it splashed into the Pool.

Amalin and her Riders stared in awe. “How,” Jeth asked. He, too, couldn’t believe his eyes. The red around his hands faded as he forgot to speak the word that had been giving him his power.

“It doesn’t matter,” Amalin screamed. The Beacon once more flashing bright. “Nothing matters except the retrieval of Henry Ash! Get her!”

Fara and Thur finally jumped off their horses, their beasts watching as they went to work. Fara went for Ash, her blade of bone slicing every which way to get around Ash’s defenses, as Thur ran to Jeth. Both he and Quill fought together as Jeth expertly dodged their weapons whenever he wasn’t yelling “Proqin,” “Proqin,” which brought all the red back into his hands.

But Amalin hadn’t been lying. Each time Jeth sent out his red—or used that red to deflect a strike that had gotten just a little too close—his magic found only sharp bone that easily pushed it aside. All his assaults were either cast into the Kawshun, or they only kept him from getting cut.

Ash couldn’t help but to take it in as she fought. Whatever was in her head, it seemed to work best when she surrendered to it—merely watched what was going on as if she was a spectator far from any danger.

She could even give Fara all her attention, look at her up close and see how dingy and coated in grime her blond hair was. In fact, Ash soon saw how Fara had skin as pale as the other Riders, yet she also looked more decrepit—almost skeletal—than them. But that didn’t in any way relate to how she fought. Fara was a bundle of energy running here and there as she tried to find some breakage, some angle which she could exploit so she could trip Ash up.

But Ash wouldn’t go down. No matter how good Fara was, Ash was better. She handled Fara so well she had the time to take a second and give Amalin another look. How that blue-eyed beauty merely stood where she’d been ever since she’d gotten off her horse. How she was letting the Beacon pulse on and on too until the blue pouring out of it was at its utter limits and she could fire off another round. Just like Fara, Amalin was doing her best to end Ash, but she failed at everything she tried.

“Who is this girl,” Fara asked as Ash had again defeated an attempt she’d made to disarm her.

Her teeth were black. Ash hadn’t seen Quill’s yet, but Fara’s teeth were a grimy black of decay that let loose a fetid odor whenever she talked. It was something Ash couldn’t avoid no matter how fast she moved.

“She is the blood of Henry Ash,” Amalin said. The Beacon was almost to the point where it could fire off another sphere. “And you know Bayden was never the same after he killed Denthro! If we can’t get to him, then we must get to his kin! We will make this girl pay for almost getting us killed!”

Fara laughed. “Almost getting us killed,” she stepped out of the way as another bit of blue went for Ash and was easily knocked aside. “Speak for yourself! I did die!”

It made sense. Hadn’t Amalin already said that Quill was gone? Ash took a quick glance over at Thur before Fara came at her once more. He might have been dead as well, but Ash didn’t think so. Out of all the Riders, it was only he and Amalin who’d held the staff, and if Amalin was alive, wouldn’t that mean that Thur had to be alive as well?

Something came out of the Pool. Right after Ash had let all the pieces fall into place—Amalin and Thur were the only living Riders around—something began to rise from the blue liquid, something large and solid and in the shape of a man.

It was Poppa Henry, the sight of him making everyone turn as Fara ended a wild charge, and Quill and Thur paused just as Jeth let one last “Proqin” die on his lips. Even Amalin lowered the Beacon.

“No,” Amalin said, “there’s too much energy. No Reflection can be made from the Pool.”

“Yet,” Poppa Henry said, “here I am.”

His voice was somehow more solid than Ash had ever heard it be. Also, he was finally a complete figure with easily discernable legs and arms and with pretty much a regular looking face and eyes. He looked almost human—a blue-covered and slightly glowing human but, still, human, nonetheless.

“And” he continued, “I have a question. Do you really think I’m the one who killed Denthro, his son, and his daughter?”

Amalin nodded as she lifted her staff back up. “I do.”

“Why,” Poppa Henry asked. He lifted something of his own. He brought up a hand and pointed two fingers to the side of Amalin. “Why does everyone believe that?”

Amalin tilted her head to the side. “I,” there was so much confusion in her voice, “what?”

“I heard a bit,” Poppa Henry explained. “Magic proved…”

“That you were the killer,” Amalin added. Maybe she’d finally understood what it was Poppa Henry was saying. “There were bits of Ophallo all over the throne room, pieces of King Denthro too, and blood from Isabella and all those Errun. None could ever work enough magic to see what had fully happened, but the violence was everywhere.

“Yet you and your children were not. You escaped, no one else did, and no one in that room, except for you, Isabella, and Denthro, could have ever had the strength to even attempt to sit on the Silver—”

Poppa Henry began to laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “That’s it? I’ve been considered a murderer because I didn’t die!”

“Ophallo failed Assembly,” Amalin countered. She gave another one of her weird smiles. It was as if she truly thought what she’d just said took care of everything. “And we all know what that means! He didn’t have strength, Henry! So, yes, you weren’t there, and you did have the strength, so who else—”

“What about the Errun,” Poppa Henry asked. His hand was still up, but it was shaking. Was he angry, nervous? Ash couldn’t yet tell. “They were known to have…the Light Benders who escaped from Cathedral told of how the Errun entered there! Why did no one think they might have been behind Denthro’s death?”

Amalin sighed. “And who had spent time with them,” she said. “Who had always gone into the Western Wilds?”

Her Poppa Henry’s hand still shook, but now Ash could also see the rage in his eyes. It was blue, which had thrown her, but she’d been around her Poppa Henry long enough to finally get it. He wasn’t just angry. He was really, really, pissed off.

“To fight them,” he shouted, “and to find Jeth, that’s why I went, and if my past is well known, then you should also know I never went alone! In the Wilds, I always had…”

“Doesn’t matter,” Amalin said. “The Errun bent light! They didn’t have the skill to do that before you were in Penthya, and last I heard they haven’t been able to do it since you left Penthya! Yet, for a moment, they had strength, and, again, who in the throne room had their own strength, who in the throne room always went to the Wilds, and who in the throne room didn’t die?”

A spark, something blue and strong, flashed along Poppa Henry’s arm. “Fine,” he said, “I’m a murderer! However, if I could do all that for a scant taste of power, then what do you think I might do to someone who threatens my chance at something even better! I love my granddaughter—what do you think I might do to protect a love which is so much greater than any throne?”

There wasn’t a spark anymore. There was a stream, not a sphere, a pure and steady stream of darkest blue. It flew from Poppa Henry’s arm. But first it ran down his shoulder and along his fingers before pouring in an unending current that hit the Kawshun right next to Amalin. The resulting explosion was terrible. It tore a massive hole in the ground, a hole that grew and grew until Amalin had to move out of its way.

Amalin shook her head. “You’ve gained more strength.”

“I’ve gained a lot,” Poppa Henry said. He dropped his arm, the blue current ending as Amalin lowered her staff. “I might even be able to keep this body and not have to jump back into a mirror for quite some time.”

“How,” Amalin asked, “what kind of dark magic do you possess?”

Poppa Henry strode out of the Pool. “I have no dark magic,” he said. He went to stand next to Ash as Fara scampered away. “I don’t have any claims to the Black other than creating the Reflection I made.”

“Which is even more proof of your guilt,” Amalin noted. “A Reflection, you took a life to make that, just another innocent you slaughtered to gain whatever power you have!”

“I only took my own life to make what I am.”

“Prove it,” Amalin said. She refocused her attention onto Ash and Jeth and then onto everyone else that stood either right at her side or just before her. “Prove it to me and to my brother, to my friends as well, that you’re a good man! You do that now, or you need to let me send you to the other side!”

Poppa Henry nodded before walking back into the Pool. He stood just past its shore; his blue feet lost in the energy there as Ash got as close to him as she could without stepping into the Pool herself.

“Fair enough,” he said, “gather round.”

“For what,” Amalin asked. “A trick?”

Poppa Henry didn’t look at Amalin. “While I do have power,” he said. He lifted both his hands above the blue that was rippling and shimmering with his every movement. “That power is not from bad magic or Bad Blood. It’s not even from the Black Light. I have it because the blood of David Random, blood from the children he had in my world before he fell into Penthya, used to run in my veins before I became this Reflection. It is that blood which makes me strong, almost as strong as Random, and it runs through my granddaughter as well.”

Amalin laughed. “You expect us to believe that?” Fara, Quill, and Thur laughed along with her as only Jeth and Ash stayed silent. “There is no way someone as vile as you could ever be any kind of relation to David Random.”

“Ash, give me the sword,” Poppa Henry said.

“What?” Ash studied the weapon she held. It had saved her life multiple times now, each occasion more amazing than what had come before. She didn’t want to give it up. “Can’t I keep it?”

Poppa Henry smiled. “I’ll only have it for a little while,” he dropped one of his hands, “please?”

Ash lifted the sword, the weapon telling her to twist it so her grandfather got its black and red hilt rather than the sharp end she’d been about to thrust his way. Her Poppa Henry took it as the presence in her mind, the sense and the calm and all that whisper and music, vanished.

“I have no more blood in me,” Poppa Henry explained. He walked further into the Pool and held the sword up for all to see. “But enough of my essence remains so I can use this. It took me a while, but as I was creating this form, I realized what this blade must be and how I can wield it. Watch me as I hold Justice one last time.”

Amalin leapt forward, Quill, Thur, and Fara staying at her side, even Jeth went along with her. They all studied the weapon from behind Ash until Amalin alone yelled, “That cannot be Justice,” as loud as she could.

But all Poppa Henry did in response was to smile again. His strange lips of blue, his entire face, beaming amusement as he took a few more steps backwards so he could get just a little deeper into the Pool.

“You need to stop doubting me,” he finally said before he thrusted the sword—Justice, its was named Justice—into the liquid energy at his feet.

*Chapter Twenty-Seven*

The Pool burst into a strong white light. It took a few minutes, but after a couple good blinks and one nice headshake, Ash found amazing. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

The Kawshun was gone. So was the Pool and the horses—even Casten couldn’t be seen when she turned to find him—but everyone else remained.

Ash had a thought. She’d heard of King Denthro before. It wasn’t one of her most favorite stories. In fact, while anything to do with him had always been quite engrossing, it had also always been so depressing. Whenever Denthro came up, Ash usually begged to skip over how he’d lost his first wife and then his second. She always wanted to hear something better—something with romance.

Ash would ask her grandfather to rush on to Isabella. Her story, at least, had handholding, long looks, and quite a few epic scenes of heartache that sometimes ended in long—slow—kisses. Ash was a fool for such things.

But far too many times, her grandfather had refused to do as asked. Ash even knew why that was. To really know the love of Isabella, Ash had to know how that love had come to a tragic halt, and since Denthro’s death was deeply tied into how Isabella had died, how could she not hear of him?

Ash had even heard all about King Denthro just before her Poppa Henry had died. Yet now that she thought back on it, that last story hadn’t dealt all that much with Denthro or Isabella, it had mainly been about Ophallo—the evil one, the one who’d made her grandfather look so wretched when he’d spoken of him. And here, in a new world, because the Kawshun truly couldn’t be seen anymore, Ash felt her heart drop.

The room she was in…she didn’t want it to look so familiar, but she couldn’t deny her dread. She was sure that at any second, she was about to see the evil one face to face.

Ash was behind five thrones. She was staring out past them—into a wide and open area where an Elf and a few Errun stood gathered around a much younger looking fellow Ash almost recognized. Everyone was facing her. Except, they weren’t looking her way. The Elf and the Errun glared heavy either at the thrones or at the younger fellow who—seriously—was someone Ash was sure she should know. His eyes, the shape of his face, this younger fellow had to have some kind of connection to her, but try as she might, Ash couldn’t put a finger on what that connection might be.

There was something else. The Errun, all six of them, were unmoving, as was the Elf—this strangeness suddenly stepping to the forefront of Ash’s mind. Figuring out who the younger fellow was would have to wait.

“Why have you brought us into a Remembrance,” Amalin asked.

Ash turned to look at the blue-eyed beauty. She and Quill—even Fara, Jeth, and Thur—were standing just behind her.

Poppa Henry was still smiling. “I knew it,” he sighed, “you do know so much, about magic, definitely about the Kawshun and the Unkindness, and that is good. It will help.”

He alone was at Ash’s side, so wrapped up in what he was looking at that Ash had thought he, too, was frozen. If it hadn’t been for his body, which kept radiating the strongest hue of the Pool, she would have believed him a statue—a gift left years ago to stand forgotten in the shadows of this place.

“I’ve always known much,” Amalin said. She stepped out from behind Ash and moved past the thrones until she was facing them. “Back in Bayden, I was trained as a High Lady of the Court, a protector for the Queen. Until the chaos in Penthya became noticeable to the Giants, I learned history, art, magic, everything a Lady should know, and I remember every bit of it. I even know that the Pool is all that could ever make a Remembrance of this size. Why have you created it?”

Poppa Henry finally moved. He went to Amalin as she came to a stop right beside the frozen Elf. He waited to see what she would do.

“The Pool is an energy I’ve never felt,” he said. Amalin was finished with her inspection, the Elf and the Errun not reacting as she waved a hand and snapped fingers in front of their faces. “What is it?”

“A leftover,” Amalin said. She turned back to the thrones. There was one that especially captured her attention. It was silver.

That alone got Ash to start walking. It got Jeth to move as well. The Silver Throne—she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it was there, to acknowledge that meant confirming this room was the one she feared, but with Amalin looking at nothing else Ash finally had to admit the truth. There was only one place this could be.

Suddenly, almost all her dread rose to new heights. If this was that room then the frozen Elf had to be Ophallo, yet Ash clung to one last section of denial as she and Jeth made their way to Poppa Henry.

But Quill, Fara, and Thur stayed put. With a pained and sour expression on Quill and Fara’s face, and with Thur looking at Fara with deepest concern, they clearly showed how much they didn’t want to move as Ash and Jeth both stared at the throne Amalin was now inspecting.

She was bent before a chair that held someone of such dignity upon it. In fact, the man on that throne looked so regal, so respectable, Ash thought she too should be bowing. Except Amalin wasn’t bending out of respect, she was doing it so she could get a better glimpse of the Silver Throne.

That man of dignity was halfway out of it. His eyes were wide with outrage too, or horror, or simply a bit of both mixed with a touch of sorrow. Ash even knew who this was, Poppa Henry’s stories had just described him far too well, and he alone killed off her last bits of denial. It was King Denthro.

He was rather solidly built, his brown hair streaked grey and kept short—his piercing blue eyes easily noticeable. Ash trembled in front of them no matter how he wasn’t looking at her. All that the frozen Denthro was staring at was the Elf—it really was Ophallo, not even the tiniest doubt about that anymore—who was staring right back at him.

“When Eric Odd built the Unkindness,” Amalin continued. She got bored and stood back up. “He gained control of a world that didn’t want him there. The Fields of Kawshun, the grey sky and the grey wall that marks the end of everything, even the bits of water that dot the land, they all belong to a place that is simply a Between—a place where the dying go to hopefully make the trek from life into the afterlife. But Odd ripped into it, he put chains upon it, he set down slabs of rock and stone and endless panes of glass to bind that Between. He also brought some servants of the Between—the ravens you saw—over to his side. He made them his slaves to further upset a world that doesn’t like the living, and the Pool is merely what remains due to the magic he had to use to form what he formed.

“None of us know if he left it behind on purpose or if it is merely a byproduct he could have never predicted, but it wasn’t there before Odd, and now it is anywhere the Kawshun wants it to be. But since it is residual energy, it can do something much greater than anything else in that world. The Pool is magic, unrealized and never used magic, just waiting to be formed into a spell.”

“But it isn’t good magic, is it,” Poppa Henry asked. He lifted a hand too as he pointed at Amalin’s face. “The Pool may be a body of untapped energy, yet it isn’t pure.”

Amalin ignored his question. She pointed a finger of her own, her hand leveled at the King. “Is that Denthro?” She’d never heard Poppa Henry’s stories. She wasn’t caught up yet. “I thought you were going to show us how you became a Reflection; what does he have to do with that?”

“Answer me,” Poppa Henry said, “because I used the Pool to bring us into this Remembrance and my granddaughter drank from it as well. If it is a tad impure, I need to fix any harm it has done.”

Quill lifted his head. He stared right at Poppa Henry. “Why do I doubt that” he asked. His words were heavy and full of malice, yet they also came out in a rush, as if speaking were something he had to get through with in a hurry. “Why do I find it highly suspect that a murderer would ever care what happens to us?”

“Yet, Rider, you still have form,” Poppa Henry said. “If I’m a powerful master of the Black, if I can create Reflections and bring many people into a Remembrance, then you must also know how I could unspool the dead flesh you wear. However, I haven’t done that, so shut up. Let your sister speak.”

“No,” Amalin said. She brought her fingers around to put them onto what Poppa Henry already was pointing at. “The Pool is not pure. My eyes prove that. For the dead, nothing the Pool can do will harm them, they are beyond harm, but for the living, the Pool will let you stay on the Unkindness and the Kawshun. It will cure many an injury and do whatever else you want it to do, but it will also bind itself to your cells until more of you is it rather than yourself. I don’t think I could live a week without a sip to keep me going…so the Pool is as impure as Eric Odd, and if you drink from it not once, not twice, but for years, it will corrupt you.”

“I thought so,” Poppa Henry said. He closed his eyes.

“What are you doing,” Amalin asked.

“I’m making sure any impurities get fixed. Of course, my body will now fall apart all the faster, but it will be worth it.”

It took a few minutes. Ash watched as her Poppa Henry’s eyes stayed shut the whole time, his face a deep-set line of concentration, but it seemed to work. Ash didn’t feel anything during the whole endeavor, and before it had begun she hadn’t felt anything either, but when Poppa Henry finally opened his eyes and smiled, she knew he’d succeeded. It was a smile she’d often seen, one that usually came after a well-told story where something about Penthya had come out so perfect her grandfather just couldn’t add anything else.

“Done,” Poppa Henry said, “and in answer to your question, Amalin, yes, that is Denthro. To prove myself a good man, I decided not to bring you into the memory of how I took my own life. Instead, I’ve brought you…”

“To where you committed your greatest atrocity,” Amalin said. “You do know a Remembrance charm never lies, right? It never indulges the wants of the person whose memory you are in. If someone is strong enough to cast it, a Remembrance doesn’t let them alter the past as they wish it to be. This spell will let us see how things actually occurred.”

“Which is why I have put everything on pause,” Poppa Henry said. “Before the yelling and the death, I think it’s time to finally correct a bit of history.” He nodded towards Denthro. “That man you already know, he is the one you think I murdered. But this fellow, you have no clue of him, do you?”

He turned and nodded to who Denthro was looking at, the sharp and angular face of a tall and angry Ophallo. He was an Elf with long brown hair and eyes a deep and vibrant shade of green. He was someone who also only looked evil once you peered deep into those eyes, which Ash was right now doing. It was then that the rage, utter and complete, could be seen.

“Who,” Amalin asked, “is that?” Obviously, Ophallo was just something else she wasn’t caught up with yet.

Poppa Henry nodded. “I suppose no picture survived if Penthya has been chaotic,” he sighed, “as a matter of fact, I was a tad taken aback at how my name has lasted for so long. But if I’m the villain of this particular tale, then maybe it shouldn’t be a shock.”

“As if we could forget you,” Quill said. His words were still rushed and somehow thick. It was as if he was trying to speak without letting anything else come out.

Poppa Henry nodded again. “My point exactly,” he said, “unless other events were around to take all your attention off me, then, of course, I’d be the monster you would never let slip from your mind. If I killed King Denthro, not just my name but a description of me would be remembered for forever while his son would merely be an afterthought kept alive for people to mourn. But this is Prince Ophallo, and I need you to remember him.”

“Why?” It was Jeth’s turn to speak, his question something Amalin nodded to as if to say she would have asked it as well.

“Because” Poppa Henry said, “he is the true murderer of Denthro.” He finally took his attention off Ophallo as he pointed to the group of Errun that stood before the younger fellow Ash still knew she should have recognized. “He is the man who slaughtered his own father, his own sister, and then, he tried to kill me.”

Ash turned. With his revelation ringing in her ears, it was almost too clear. Of course, the younger man was her Poppa Henry. The eyes, the face—it could be no one else.

But there was more. There was a door further behind her much younger Poppa Henry, one halfway open with a few figures just outside it.

A woman, a beauty with long locks of thick chestnut brown hair and eyes to match, with a slim figure and a face as gorgeous as Amalin’s, stood in the half open doorway with even more Errun flanking her. Ash could see the gentle grace of this woman’s tan skin and the way she had her slender arms wrapped around her chest. She was cradling two bundles—finely wrapped objects she held with such care Ash wasn’t surprised when she realized she was also staring at that woman’s children.

Ash knew this lady. She was Isabella Denthro, and she was about to die.

*Chapter Twenty-Eight*

In an instant, the throne room was alive. “Don’t do this,” the younger Poppa Henry yelled. But Ash could barely hear him. Everything was moving—so much sound bouncing off the walls. “Ophallo, don’t you do this!”

Yet perhaps it wasn’t only that movement that was causing Ash to barely hear. She had been keeping a rather obsessive eye on the tiny bundles being held in the arms of the frozen Isabella. Was one of them her father? And if so, who was the other? Such thoughts had become their own tempest within her mind. There was no way she could pay attention to anything else.

Still, she did, somehow, manage to spot the exact moment when her Poppa Henry—the old one, the all blue one—moved. How he leaned forward and angled between the Errun before he put just three fingers onto his younger self’s face. It was what would bring this Remembrance to life—Ash was certain of that long before everything else gained such motion—and, for a second, she even wished it wouldn’t work. Isabella—no, her grandmother—would be fine, so safe, only if it didn’t.

But her wishes weren’t granted, the room suddenly gaining that bouncing off the walls chaos that had made the younger Poppa Henry so hard to hear. Yet maybe that had been a difficulty only for her. Ash also caught how Denthro quickly began to nod at every word being yelled before he cleared his throat, the room slowly going quiet—he really did carry so much authority—once he did.

“Son,” Denthro said, “listen to Henry. Please.”

He finally stood all the way up, gaining freedom from the Silver Throne yet not stepping one foot from it as he nodded once more. But this time he did it towards Ophallo who only let a cruel snicker echo about before he looked over at the younger Poppa Henry.

“Son,” he sighed, “did he just say son?”

Ophallo whirled. He punched his father across the jaw, Denthro stumbling before he fell back into the Silver Throne. He toppled it over, sending it straight at Quill, Fara, and Thur.

But no matter how much everything in the room might have seemed real, nothing was really real at all. As Isabella was pushed inside—the Errun at her arms jabbing her cruelly onward—Ash saw how Denthro caught himself before he too toppled to the ground. He once more stood up straight, but the Silver Throne sailed right on through Quill, Fara, and Thur. The chair hit the floor, bounced twice, and acted as if the people it should have hit had been nothing but ghosts.

“My father wants me to listen to his favorite,” Ophallo laughed some more. The Errun in the room, the crowd of six around the younger Poppa Henry, and the five still at Isabella’s side, joined him in his sick and twisted hilarity. “Why am I not surprised?”

“If this is because of the chair,” the younger Poppa Henry said. He moved forward, tried to get closer to Ophallo, but one of the Errun hit him cruelly in his gut and sent him to his knees.

“No,” Isabella cried. Her babies began to wail as the Errun near to her kept her from rushing to her husband.

The younger Poppa Henry gasped. “I…I’m fine,” he said. He stood back up and faced Ophallo. “If this is because of the chair,” he said again, “I renounce it. I renounce anything to do with power and ruling Penthya. Do you hear that? I renounce it! Let my wife, my children, and your father go!”

“I am impressed,” Ophallo sighed.

He didn’t look at the younger Poppa Henry as he talked. Instead, he smiled at his father who only rubbed at his jaw, and scowled, as Ophallo began to walk towards the toppled over Silver Throne. He slowly hauled it upright, wiping at that throne carefully, lovingly, with the sleeve of his shirt. He only he turned back to the younger Poppa Henry once all that silver had gained such a shine.

“I’ll admit it,” Ophallo said. “I was always—somewhat…not too much—impressed by you,”

His fingers slid across the arms and high arched back of the Silver Throne. But it was done lightly, the softest tease as if hauling everything upright had been only allowed out of necessity yet any other full on touch might burn, or scar, because he didn’t yet have some sort of sacred permission.

“It truly was so tiny,” Ophallo continued, his tease continuing as well even though Ash was starting to get rather disturbed by it. “But ever since you fell into Penthya I actually found myself carrying a slight sense of admiration over just how quickly you got so many to love you. Your strength, and goodness, Henry, people almost worship you because of that…yet now I see I never should have felt anything but disgust. Are you a fool? Is that why you can’t understand? I don’t want one chair! I want everything that is mine to have!”

“I know what you want,” Denthro said. The shock over his son’s assault was wearing off. He glared at Ophallo with unbridled hate. “You want my throne and my power! You want all I have ever had even when you know you are too weak to rule without the aid of Errun scum!”

The Errun in the room snarled and hissed. Their wide and unblinking black eyes glowed dark as their lips curled to reveal row upon row of sharp teeth. A few at the younger Poppa Henry’s side even moved closer to Denthro before Ophallo—finally, gratefully—took every finger off the Silver Throne. He held up his hands. His own authority, dark but there, instantly quieted those beasts.

“Why shouldn’t I want that,” Ophallo asked. He let his arms drop too before gesturing towards the thrones. “Why shouldn’t I want what is mine since I am your only rightful heir? Not your only child, but your only heir since Isabella is just a woman and Henry isn’t even from our world!”

“Then sit on it,” Denthro said. He nodded at the Silver Throne. “Stop touching and sit!”

Ophallo laughed once more, a deep and throaty roar that didn’t try to cover the rage inside. He walked over to his father—stared deep into Denthro’s eyes.

He was gone, and no longer did Ash have to look close to catch that. Ophallo had fallen into a level of insanity she could clearly see even from where she now stood, tucked up along one of the farthest—all that teasing had made her run there—corners of the room.

“So,” Ophallo said, “you think me the real fool, weak and pathetic, an idiot perhaps?”

“Son, I never thought—” Denthro began to say. But he was cut off when Ophallo struck him yet again, this time with an open hand across his face.

“Don’t call me that,” Ophallo said. “I am not your son!”

“You are!”

Ophallo shook his head. “No, no, no,” he yelled. “I failed Assembly, and that was the final thing in a long list of things to prove that though I may be your blood I am not your son…and you asking me to sit on the Silver Throne only proves it more!”

“But if it is what you want,” Denthro sighed before he, again, rubbed at the spot where he’d been hit.

Ophallo didn’t answer. He just nodded to one of the Errun behind Isabella, that creature quickly handing to him a sword Ash recognized. It was the same weapon her all-blue Poppa Henry still held, Ophallo grabbing its red and black hilt as he tried his best to absorb its weight.

Ophallo smiled, or at least he tried to smile. His lips more trembled than anything else. “I made sure to have them get this after I snuck them inside,” he said. He finally got Justice up, the blade moving so slow but he did manage to raise it until its gleaming tip was aimed right at Denthro’s heart. “The Errun came with me through the Unkindness,” Ophallo sighed. “They attacked all your Riders, Father. They let those poor idiots finally cross to the other side of what they’ve ridden on for eons, and then we entered through a mirror in your bedroom. After that, I sent them off so they could carry this to me.”

“Impossible,” Denthro said, “they could never—Justice has in it slivers of the same metal that created Judgment! No foul Errun could ever wield it!”

The Errun that had handed the sword to Ophallo snarled angry and took a step forward. Immediately both the younger Poppa Henry and Isabella acted. They tried to protect their king, but cruel hands clamped down and prevented them from going anywhere.

They needn’t have bothered. Ash too had thought that the Errun might do something terrible, but instead of hurting Denthro, the beast merely lifted its palm. It showed, in the vague moonlight of the room, dark red splashes which covered its flesh.

“The Errun are strong, Father, you know this,” Ophallo explained, “and all it took was a bit of blood from my very veins, a splash of which is on the hands of every Errun so the spells on my sister’s body, so the spells on Justice too, won’t harm them. With my blood, they can lift any sword. They can also haul Isabella into your throne room with her noisy brats in tow. Am I an idiot now, Father! Am I the fool!”

Denthro took a step back. “What have you become,” he moaned. “Saturating these beasts…it doesn’t make any sense? You still have magic—you still could be much in my kingdom even if you can’t handle all the Bright that flows through these thrones!”

“And there it is,” Ophallo said. He dropped Justice to the floor, its tip now only digging heavy into the rock slabs near to his feet. “I knew you knew it. I just wanted to hear it from your mouth.”

“What,” Denthro asked.

Ophallo leaned on Justice’s hilt as he threw an arm out to point back at the five thrones. “Don’t play coy,” he said. “I have read the ancient texts, the books that all the kings of Penthya have for their eyes alone. I know I should have waited. Only when I was given the Silver Throne should I have been able to get inside your private study, but I was impatient. I snuck in, and I know. You want me dead.”

“I never wanted that.”

“Don’t lie,” Ophallo screamed, yet then went calm. It was terrifying. “Father,” he whispered, “don’t lie, especially not when we’re closer than we have been in years. I know my failure at Assembly means that if I try to sit on the Silver Throne it would kill me in an instant. I would not be able to control all the Bright that flows through it, and since you know this as well, I can only assume you want me to sit because I will die. Do you want that, Father? Do you want me dead?”

“Of course,” Denthro spat. He let a mad laugh of his own escape from his lips. “If you’ve sided with the Errun over your failure, then as you say, you are not my son. No child of mine would ever do such a terrible act, so sit. If you do, you will kill not only yourself, but also everyone in this room. But that is okay. I would love to watch you be torn to shreds before I breathe my last.”

Now it was Ophallo’s turn to nod. “Finally,” he said, “a true emotion. Whenever you told me you loved me, whenever you called me son, I never believed. But what you’ve just said…my father, a man willing to kill his own grandchildren to get what he wants—that’s the father I know!”

Denthro shook his head. “Son, I—”

“Shut your mouth,” Ophallo said. “You are who you are, and I am who I am. I’m someone who didn’t just side with the Errun this very day over one tiny failure, but rather, I have been in talks with them for years. How else do you think they were so ready to invade Watch at a moment’s notice? How else do you think that Pride Syndon is entering Cathedral as we speak?”

Denthro turned to size up the Errun around him. There were only eleven, but the way they returned his gaze with such victory in their cold black eyes, it turned Denthro a shade of white Ash hadn’t thought possible. Even with his son’s betrayal and his daughter and grandchildren in the clutches of monsters, Denthro had still held such air of authority about him. It spoke of how much he truly had believed he would somehow make his way through this, but Ophallo’s words struck hard—they were way worse than any hit across his face.

“Cathedral,” Denthro said, “how…you let them enter into the source of all our magic?”

“Father,” Ophallo began to confess, “that isn’t even the worst of what I’ve done. Besides Cathedral and Watch, I have been slowly bringing the Errun closer and closer to the western edges of the Cliffs of Random. Every Band is in attendance, their Prides ready to lead them to victory with weapons and lines of supply that will keep them going for months. Father, I have been talking with them for so long, and my failure was just the final sign. The Errun here, and those with Syndon, are merely an advance guard sowing chaos and destroying your access to magic so when I finally do sit on the Silver Throne no one in the Centaur Woods, or in the Lumbrica, no one even way up in Bayden, will be able to stop me.”

“For a throne you can never control,” Denthro said, “it makes no sense.”

“But it does,” Ophallo said. He once more pointed towards the five chairs. “It does if you have been listening! But you still think I’m only after my birthright, that I only want the one!”

“Don’t you,” the younger Poppa Henry asked. “You said you wanted the Silver Throne?”

“No,” Ophallo sighed, “I said I wanted what was mine to have. So, I want the Silver, but why should I settle for it alone when there is magic and Light that runs through the other four? As long as I do a bit of cleaning, as long as I sever the line of Good Blood that has bound those thrones together since the last Search occurred, I can be the master of everything.”

Denthro began to laugh. “Never—if you can’t sit on the Silver Throne now, what makes you think that killing me or your sister will change anything?”

“Because” Ophallo said, “with the line of Good Blood gone, and with Cathedral destroyed, I can make it so the Bright in these thrones gets changed to Black. I can put into these chairs enough darkness to allow me to be able to control them because though I may be weak in the Bright, my skill in the Black is beyond compare.”

The babies in Isabella’s arms had wailed through every bit of the conversation, and all Isabella had done was to try and calm them. But as Ash saw her suddenly start to move, she could only think one thing. Isabella must not have been able to stay silent any longer.

She pushed forward, ignoring the Errun who were surprised by her movement, until she was at her husband’s side. “You really are the fool if you think that will work,” Isabella said. She smiled at the younger Poppa Henry who drew her close and kissed the top of her head. “If you bring the Black into any of those thrones, Penthya will be destroyed in fire and in ice. You will become nothing more than a king of desolation.”

Ophallo smiled. “Fire and ice,” he said, “let’s see if that’s true.”

He lifted Justice back up, the sword still heavy, the cumbersome nature of it causing his arms to shake. But he managed. He even, somehow, still had the strength to lunge it forward, send it straight through his father’s chest.

Denthro buckled. Shock—he really hadn’t expected his son to do it—coating his face as Ophallo quickly wrenched Justice right back out. Denthro collapsed to the floor. Blood, thick and red, poured everywhere. Denthro was dying, but he was not yet gone. There was just enough time for Ophallo to once more leer over him as the Errun in the room kept Isabella and the younger Poppa Henry exactly where they were.

“Do you know how heavy Justice is for me,” Ophallo asked. He leaned further over the prostrate and gasping form of his father. “It’s supposed to work like Judgment did. It is supposed to be light in the hands of its true master. It is even supposed to speak directly into the mind of whatever person of Good Blood it knows should wield it.” Ophallo twisted Justice until he had it hovering right over Denthro’s face. “You handled it with ease, and so did Isabella, but when I was younger, I tried to lift it, and even then, Justice stayed quiet and oh so heavy. It knew how wrong I was, the first sign I had that I was not your son. Oh, I was of your blood, but I wasn’t your son, and I never would be.

“But I worked at it. I practiced until no matter how heavy, I could lift this blade, and now I’ve used it to pierce your heart. I’ve killed you, Father, and once Isabella is gone, I will let Henry Ash watch as I take your thrones and warp them into things I can sit upon. My darkness will spread.”

Denthro gasped for a few seconds more—then went into a stillness that wasn’t like what he’d had before the Remembrance had come to life. He was truly gone, Isabella wailing at the sight of her dead father as the younger Poppa Henry seethed in the grasp of the Errun who held him in place.

“Coward,” the younger Poppa Henry said. His children were suddenly more frightened than ever. They cried out until his words, yet again, were almost lost. “How about you let me go? Let’s see if you can handle someone who fights back!”

Ophallo looked at him. “No,” he sighed, “don’t think I’ll do that. But I will take the mantle of coward if it pleases you. If you want to call someone who’s smart enough not to tempt fate a coward, so be it. Before I came here, I cast charms to prevent most magic from working in this castle. Unless you are me, or someone I give power to, the Bright will be out of your reach. But such a measure is miniscule when compared to my biggest preparation. I made it so my father would not be able to work a Last Breath.”

Ophallo smiled and took a mocking bow, as if delighting in some hidden victory only he could see. Apparently, Last Breaths were really big deals.

“You must understand,” Ophallo continued, “I’ve thought of every outcome, and I won’t let you hurt me, Henry, but I will let my Errun keep hold of you. I’ll let you watch how I go about killing your wife.”

The younger Poppa Henry struggled, but the Errun who held his arms were soon accompanied by more. Except for the ones who stayed beside Isabella, all the rest were with him. They pulled until he was on one side of the room while she and their children were on the other.

“Don’t, please,” the younger Poppa Henry begged. He threw himself against the sharp talons at his shoulders and chest. He writhed in the grasp of the Errun until the clothes he was wearing were in tatters—his chest torn wide with the many slashes being made each time he tried to escape. “Please, Ophallo, kill me, don’t you hurt her, don’t you hurt my kids!”

Ophallo sneered. “I’ve already told you,” he gloated, “any scant admiration for you is gone. I see you now as you are, something tainted by human weakness. David Random was the only one of your kind who ever mattered; it’s why I need not worry about you or your kin! I don’t care how great others think you to be, you are still a full and complete Child of Man, Henry Ash! You are not only somewhat human like my father was! You don’t even have a splash of Elf in you! You are truly nothing, and your weakness is all over your children!”

Ophallo stopped his sneer and replaced it with a smile. He wasn’t just gloating, he was reveling in this moment, his victory assured. “All I need to do is to sever what is in Isabella,” he said. “I kill her, and my spell will work. I kill her, and you and your kids can enjoy the sight of your new liege as he ascends to power.”

He pointed at Isabella. Using a hand free of a sword, he flicked a finger her way as two of the Errun grabbed both her babies. They held them as Isabella ceased her sobs and stared only at her brother.

“Promise me you won’t hurt my family,” she said. The Errun that didn’t have her children took hold of her arms. She didn’t struggle.

“I make no promises,” Ophallo said. He walked towards her, both his arms trembling as he raised Justice higher than ever, over his head so the most epic of assaults could be achieved.

“You will fail,” Isabella sneered. Her voice was the only angry part of her body, the rest of her was as peaceful as ever.

“Don’t think so,” Ophallo kept smiling as he stopped right in front of her before turning back to look at the younger Poppa Henry. “Ready?”

“Not her…please,” the younger Poppa Henry begged. His voice was filled with so much agony that tears were all that Ash could feel along her face.

“Sorry,” Ophallo said. He brought Justice back down as the younger Poppa Henry—and the older version as well—screamed.

*Chapter Twenty-Nine*

What happened next went by in a hurry. Ash wasn’t sure she saw it correct.

Ophallo pulled Justice out of Isabella. But unlike what he’d done with his father, he didn’t bother to watch her die. He merely turned towards the Silver Throne.

“Mine,” he said.

The whole room was off kilter. There was so much blood; the bright red coming out of Denthro—and now Isabella’s own growing pool. Ash didn’t want to see any of that, but she couldn’t look away.

“And now,” Ophallo said. He dropped Justice to the ground before lifting his hands. A foul spell, something long and awful, quickly followed. “Darkness.”

A grey, some swarming mass of dreary color, formed around his wrists and fingertips. Everything in the room went silent, except for him and the younger Poppa Henry that is. That Poppa Henry merely wept on his knees as he cried Isabella’s name. But Ophallo had no trouble ignoring him. Never once did he hesitate in his words, and when he was done, the grey sprung from his hands. It flowed over each throne.

There was movement. Isabella was sitting up, the wound at her chest—one just to the right of her throat—horrible to look at, and probably painful to the extreme. Ash didn’t know how she could still be alive.

Isabella smiled at the younger Poppa Henry. “My life,” she said. She lifted a hand. “My life for you all.”

There was light, so blinding, which shone from the hand Isabella was directing at the younger Poppa Henry. Ash had to close her eyes—she was so glad she was finally able to do that—yet still she heard Isabella say, “My breath,” and then the light grew even brighter until everything went dark.

“She gave you a Last Breath,” Amalin asked.

Ash looked around. She was back beside the Pool. Not only that, but she was also in the exact same spot. A part of her had half expected that with all the walking she’d done, she would find herself somewhere far. Yet she hadn’t moved an inch.

But that wasn’t the case for Casten. He was still lying on the Kawshun, yet he was no longer near to the Pool. It seemed that while everyone else had been watching Isabella die, his wounds had undergone a bit more healing, and that process had caused quite a lot of thrashing.

“Poppa Henry,” Ash said.

He alone was in the blue. He stood quiet, the liquid energy lapping around his ankles. Both his hands were even still wrapped around Justice’s hilt as Ash slowly began to head his way.

She was afraid of his silence. Inside the Remembrance, he’d alternated between calm and utterly devastated, and that she’d understood. It was another reason why she’d never liked any story about Denthro. They remained depressing, yet they were also so unfair, and, this time, things had been even worse. This time she’d seen rather than just hear, and if she was being affected this badly what must her grandfather be feeling?

“Not just a story anymore, is it,” Poppa Henry said when Ash reached him, his body, the entirety of the blue making up his face, arms, and legs, looking a tad lighter in color.

It was as if he was reading her mind, and Ash wasn’t surprised. Suddenly, she could feel her grandfather. She could feel everyone and everything around. Before, she’d been afraid of his silence, but she had to admit, she’d also been afraid of the Pool. It was why she hadn’t walked into it till now.

But it was nice. Not amazingly so, she didn’t want to stay in it for long, but the blue only tickled at her feet as it sparked against the cuffs of her jeans and her socks beneath.

The best description Ash had was that it was like she’d just stepped into an eternal hive of pins and needles as tiny shocks danced along her toes. But it wasn’t annoying. Everything was somehow warm and comforting—the pins and needles friendly rather than alien and scary. As soon as she stepped off the Kawshun, Ash felt as if she should welcome what was happening, and when she did, she realized something she was sure no one on the shoreline had any clue about.

Once in the Pool, she could feel the minds and emotions of everyone nearby. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, and she was in no way reading their thoughts, but she could understand what made them act the way they did. In fact, Ash could sense all the Kawshun.

She felt a flood of anger somewhere off in the distance, a sure sign she’d located the pack of wolves, and when she followed a soft tug of curiosity above her head, she found an endlessly circling raven flying way up in the sky. Living or dead, she could feel it, and when her grandfather turned to her, she knew he was the same. They were connected. She understood him more than she ever had before.

Ash nodded her head. “No, it isn’t just a story.” She grabbed Justice’s hilt. “Can I take this?”

“Of course,” Poppa Henry said, “it is more your sword than mine. It told you how to fight, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

“Then I was wrong. Justice has never been dangerous, so lift it out of the blue, my Little Ash. I don’t want you in this Pool for long.”

With one hand, Ash easily pulled Justice up and followed her Poppa Henry. There was no trace of moisture along the sharp edges of the blade, yet she absent-mindedly wiped at it with the sleeve of her red shirt. She kept trying to polish the sword as she stepped back onto the Kawshun.

The presence of the Pool vanished. Only the voice of Justice was back with her as Ash went to her Poppa Henry’s side. He stood before Amalin who’d maneuvered herself in front of him with her staff lowered slightly.

“You need to answer me,” she said.

She and the Beacon did not look any happier than they’d been before the Remembrance, Amalin’s eyes even flashing a quick beam of darkness as she scowled Poppa Henry’s way. Just a second ago, Ash had understood her to a degree she’d never expected, but now that knowledge was fading fast. What made Amalin tick? What made her happy? And just why was she scowling? In the Pool, Ash had known, but on the Kawshun, this wild lady was instantly back to being only a mystery.

“The memory I showed should have given you all the answers you need,” Poppa Henry said. He pointed to the left, over another few dips and rises in the muddy earth to where Ash, while in the Pool, had been sure she’d felt something lost to be. “Besides,” Poppa Henry went on, “I need to tell you before the blue fully leaves me—there are souls nearby who have just entered the Kawshun. You should be more concerned about them.”

“We have the Beacon for that,” Amalin said. She nodded towards the still-angry gem at the top of her staff. “It is filled with bits of the Pool that can’t be drunk by the living, but they are bits that still can find any lost soul that is near.”

“Then use it,” Poppa Henry said, “do your job.”

Amalin’s eyes flashed once more, the deepest and most vibrant shade of blue yet. “Do not presume to tell me what to do,” she said. “Our job will get done, but first I want a few words.”

She threw her staff to Thur who stood beside Quill and Fara who were now doubled over with the same discomfort they’d been showing in the Remembrance. Were they in pain? And just how could they feel anything since Ash knew both were dead?

“I am not myself,” Quill said. He looked at the Beacon which was flashing erratically in Thurs hands. “Henry Ash has done something to unbalance me.”

“And me,” Fara chimed in.

“Yes,” Thur said. He still only had concern for Fara. “He cannot be trusted.”

“Yes,” Amalin was quick to add, “he can.”

It was Jeth who spoke up this time. “Come again,” he asked. He’d stayed put until Ash had moved, her entrance then exit from the Pool his sign to get back to Casten. Down at his side, it looked to Ash as if Jeth had unwound Casten’s bandages and had found him to be fine. “You now think you can trust Henry?”

“Of course,” Amalin said. “It was his Remembrance we were in, was it not? Just the injured Elf wasn’t there. I assume, since he was unconscious, he was left out, but we were there, and we saw. A Remembrance never lies, you know this, Quill, you know this too, Fara, so don’t tell me we can’t trust what we have seen. Henry James Ash was not King Denthro’s murderer. Prince Ophallo was.”

“But I feel,” Quill said. He shook his head and clutched at his stomach even more. “It has to be from mischief.”

“You feel?” True astonishment was in Amalin’s voice as she walked over to Quill. “I thought…I just thought you were in pain.”

Quill laughed. “How can the dead be hurt or feel pain? This is only the discomfort of life. It started in the Remembrance.”

“How,” Amalin asked. She turned back towards Poppa Henry whose blue body she still couldn’t help but to scowl at. “How is this possible?”

“The Pool,” Poppa Henry said, “I used the energy inside the form I now have to counteract its more dangerous side effects, but it seems I was better able to help the living than the dead. Everything should get better soon.”

“You’re certain,” Amalin asked.

“Absolutely, they’ll be completely fine in a matter of hours.”

Amalin turned back to her brother. “Is the staff okay, can it help?”

“I…I think so,” Quill said.

The blue was flashing erratic. It reminded Ash of when Amalin had held it near to Jeth.

“The Beacon is only upset,” Quill continued. “But once it decides if Fara and I are still dead or not, it should be able to flow. You were right. The Remembrance was not a lie.”

As if to prove he was telling the truth, Quill straightened, the blue gem also ceasing its frantic show. It slowed to a dull rhythmic pulse.

“There are souls close,” Thur said. He too was convinced. The concern he held slipped as he nodded his head and pointed to where Poppa Henry had pointed. “I can feel them.”

“Then go,” Amalin ordered.

“But” Thur said, “they’re close but…it isn’t very close. They’re at the limits of what the Beacon can detect and…it’s still a distance.”

Quill appeared to be about to speak. But Amalin never let him say a word.

“And I will be fine.”

“We know,” Quill began. “But are you—”

Amalin sighed. “But what?”

“Are you coming with us?”

“No.”

“I thought so.”

“What?”

“You’re going to help.”

Amalin gave another one of her not-so-convincing smiles. “I have to,” she said. “For our world, but mostly just for Bayden. Ophallo may be dead, but there are plenty who still revere his name even if many more may have forgotten what he looks like. The Purifiers who were attacking those with the blood of Man in them and—and the Order of the Anti-Child who were just getting started before we got here. Quill, who knows how much worse it has become? Bayden could be wiped off the map because of this lie. I have to help Henry.”

Quill nodded in agreement. “And to do that, what will you do?”

“First, I will get a few more details from him,” Amalin said, “like if his wife really did use a Last Breath and what that meant. I will even hear of why he waited until now to work the one bit of magic that would have cleared his name—then I will send him on his way.”

“You mean you’ll go back to Penthya?”

Quill looked at the Kawshun horses nearby, all four that stood staring at the group by the Pool. He smiled sad.

“I won’t be going with you now,” Amalin said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving for good. I will point Henry Ash towards the correct direction. I’ll meet you later.”

“We’ll take two horses,” Quill said. “And do you have your flask? If you fill it to the brim right now, it will last for months.”

“Quill, I’m not—” Amalin began.

Quill moved. He threw his arms around his sister. “You should have never been here,” he said. “I want you to go.”

Actually, he hugged her for quite a while as Ash could hear Amalin try and fail to give a reply. There were only gasps, wet smacks of an empty mouth.

“I…I’m not leaving,” Amalin finally said. “I’m just going to point the way.”

“But you want to help, don’t you,” Quill asked. He let her go as he slowly walked back towards the Kawshun horses, one of which Fara and Thur were already on.

“Of course.”

“Then go,” Quill said. He jumped onto the first horse he reached. “You have to.”

*Chapter Thirty*

Ash couldn’t take her eyes off Amalin. How she stood peering out after the Kawshun horses until they were mere specks on the horizon. How her fists kept clinching tight too—white knuckles going whiter, then relaxing, going whiter, then relaxing again. Also, strangest of all, how Amalin never blinked.

Ash made certain of it. Whenever she wasn’t taking a quick glimpse at those tightening knuckles, she stayed fixed only on electric blue. Even when Casten began to moan, and Jeth shuffled over to again kneel beside him, Ash clearly saw how Amalin just stared, and stared, at muddy hills and a grey sky. She wouldn’t turn away.

There was a slight rustling of clothes. Jeth was rolling up the green of Casten’s shirt, worrying over his wounds for about the hundredth time.

“Elf,” Amalin sighed, “you know he has been healing. He thrashed about while Henry Ash had us in that Remembrance, he’s been healing quite a lot. Leave him be.”

Ash had quickly turned, the briefest switch from staring at Amalin to taking a hurried peek at what was going on behind. But she was sure Amalin hadn’t stopped looking at those hills. How had she known what had happened?

“I also told you the Pool would cure him,” Amalin continued. This was her longest bit of talking in quite some time. Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing. “And you’ve already checked on him endlessly. Why keep that up?”

“But” Jeth said. He stood up quick, as if caught doing something naughty. “It really has taken a while.”

Amalin finally turned. She even rolled her eyes, something so extraordinary—just how could deepest sapphire spark such electric intensity—that Ash kind of hoped she might do it again.

“This, too, I have explained,” Amalin sighed, her eyes staying completely still as she did. That was disappointing. “His injuries were severe and they occurred not on the Unkindness. I doubt if he wasn’t an Elf he would have survived. But he is Elf, and he put himself into a state of meditation to slow his loss of blood. He is fine.”

Jeth walked over to Amalin, letting loose a sigh of his own before wiping bits of the Kawshun off his legs. “How about you,” he asked.

“What,” Amalin said.

“I’ll leave a potential kinsman of mine alone, but you need to do the same.”

“I don’t follow?”

Amalin looked at Jeth in confusion. It was another something extraordinary, and Ash was so happy—how was Amalin’s blue able to do even that—yet she could already tell that that confusion wouldn’t last. Amalin quickly sized Jeth up, perhaps finding him somewhat wanting, before she angled her sight back towards where every Rider had gone.

“Your brother has left,” Jeth said. He pointed to the endless amounts of muddy hills. “Stop trying to find him when there is nothing to see.”

Amalin sighed one last time. “Since they just took off, maybe you could give me a moment.”

“And since a potential kinsman just got hurt,” Jeth countered, “why can’t you indulge my worry? If you can’t stop looking at things you can’t possibly see, then why should I stop checking out his injuries?”

Amalin whirled. “You have no clue about this place,” she smiled, Ash quickly hoping she would again roll her eyes. Or be confused. Either would have been so much better. “You have no clue about me.”

“Of course not,” Jeth said. “I may have been a wolf on the Kawshun, but how could I know of this place; how could anyone know of it?”

He turned towards Poppa Henry and Ash. It was clear he wanted support—a tiny smile of agreement or a hearty nod. Amalin had asked if he knew anything about her, and Jeth was sure that no one, especially not he, could know the answer.

Ash gave him his nod. She even added a shrug, but her Poppa Henry merely shook his light blue head in sorrow.

“Wait,” Jeth said, “Henry, are you…do you mean people can know about her, about this place?”

“Of course,” Amalin said. “In all of Penthya it’s pretty common knowledge, unless you’re someone who was taken from their family when they were but a Little.”

Poppa Henry pointed at her. “You,” his voice was a loud snap of rage. “Shut up!”

“Why,” Amalin asked. “Have I upset you?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Poppa Henry said, “and it isn’t fair. He wasn’t being mean or rude, he just doesn’t understand. If he wants to be concerned for a man who may be his kin, then let him be concerned.”

“But it’s foolish. That Elf—”

“His name is Casten,” Poppa Henry said, “just as the girl beside me is named Ash and not little girl, and the Elf that you are ridiculing is Jeth! Start talking to them in the correct manner, not like they are only more lost souls you can boss around!”

Amalin mockingly bowed. “Whatever the great Henry Ash wants, I did just stand up for you because of your Remembrance, so, please, feel free to yell if it makes you happy.”

Jeth threw up his hands. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said. It was like he was trying to quiet everything and, somehow, it worked. “What do you mean I should know about the Kawshun,” he asked, Amalin and Poppa Henry not saying another word as he dropped his hands back down. “Why should I know about a land I didn’t even realize existed before I fell into it?”

Amalin took a deep breath. Was she counting—trying to pause a beat so that when she did get back to talking it wouldn’t be too loud? It sure looked like she was.

“Okay,” she finally said as a rush of pent up slipped free from between her teeth. “Maybe I’m not used to non-Riders questioning me. Maybe I shouldn’t have called anyone foolish.”

She looked at both Jeth and Poppa Henry as she spoke, but it was only Jeth who answered her. Without a trace of anything except an eagerness to please, he smiled. It looked great, nowhere near as off-putting as what Amalin could grin.

“Not a problem,” he said, “so tell. Why should I know about you?”

“Because when any Elf comes of age, they are taught of the Kawshun and of the Unkindness,” Poppa Henry said before Amalin could reply. “And since Elves aren’t considered mature until after their one hundredth birthday, this revelation takes a while to arrive even when Elves start their training in the Bright as soon as they are fifty. Since you…”

“Since I was abducted before I was a hundred,” Jeth said, “I wouldn’t know of this world.”

Amalin made sure Poppa Henry wasn’t about to speak before she got her next words out. “Exactly,” she added. “Others who are not yet dead have wielded the staff long before I took it, and what happened to my eyes happened to theirs. It is a constant trick of the Kawshun and of the Pool, and if you had stayed with your kind, you would have known all about it.”

“And what is that,” Jeth asked.

“I can see everything,” Amalin explained, “even when my eyes are closed, I can look at you as a flesh and blood Elf, see your long black hair, your dirty white skin, and then, if I so desired, I could change the aspect. I could have you become nothing more than an outline of reds and yellows, a few blues and dark smudges as I changed my vision to see only heat instead of concrete forms.”

“Really,” Jeth asked, “you see everything? Even your brother?”

“Distance, too, is defeated,” Amalin said. “If I focus, I can bring everything into clarity. I can even see what is going on behind me without ever turning.”

“Sounds nice.”

Amalin shook her head. “It isn’t. Remember, I see when my eyes are closed. It is a trick of the Kawshun, the curse of the Pool. Once the blue was in me to a degree I could never escape from, I became doomed to live this way forever.”

“I,” Jeth began, “I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Amalin nodded, “and I truly shouldn’t have acted as if I didn’t. But you must understand, I also knew what would happen to me long before I chose to be here. I know this place and all it can give, so, trust me on this too: leave that Casten alone.”

“Won’t bother him again,” Jeth said. “But, and just to clarify, exactly how much longer will it take before he wakes?”

Amalin didn’t get anywhere as near to Casten as Jeth had, and she certainly didn’t drop to a knee to fret over his wounds or to check and recheck a pulse that must have already gone smooth. She merely let her blue eyes roam over his body.

“He’ll be fully healed in ten more minutes, maybe less,” she said. “We have enough time to get a few of my questions resolved.”

Poppa Henry laughed at that. “Well great,” he said. “Casten didn’t see the Remembrance, so he’ll fight me when he does wake, why not do questions till then. Sounds like fun.”

It was a prophetic statement, Poppa Henry so spot on seeing as how Casten truly did leap up and fight as soon as he woke. Still, Amalin did get pretty much every answer she could ever want before any excitement arrived—and Ash also got to delight in the fact that she was able to hear some details which explained things about the death of her grandmother in a way she’d never thought possible—so perhaps a tiny scuffle afterwards wasn’t all that bad.

The last bit of light that had been seen—what had burned so brilliant after Isabella had raised her hand—had been a Last Breath, a spell as powerful as creating any Reflection. But power was the only thing those two spells had in common, seeing as how a Reflection—usually—needed someone else’s life for it to work whereas a Last Breath only succeeded when it took the life of the one who’d created it.

Isabella had known this, her reaching out towards her husband and children just the very last heroic act she could ever do. She’d taken her last few breaths and had used them to place her family inside a spell of protection that had instantly transported the younger Poppa Henry, and her children, so very far from Castle Watch.

“It was because Ophallo wasn’t prepared,” Poppa Henry explained. “He’d set up safeguards against his father’s strength but for Isabella he must not have thought she could ever cast something as powerful as a Last Breath. But she could, and she did, yet she couldn’t…she must have only thought what she was doing was for the best. She couldn’t have foreseen how wrong it would go.”

“What do you mean,” Amalin asked. Her eyes once more flashing a quick glow of darkest blue.

“I found myself in the Marsh of Lumbrica,” Poppa Henry said. “I was alone, and I didn’t get back to Castle Watch for over a month—maybe it was over two months. By then, I’d heard Ophallo was dead, and that most access points to Cathedral had been cut off from all who’d tried to reach them. I didn’t know the Silver Throne had been damaged as greatly as it had—I wasn’t even sure how Ophallo had died—but it soon became obvious that Penthya was consumed with the start of war. I had to hide.”

“Why,” Amalin asked. “If you’d revealed yourself, confessed and had grabbed someone—had done a Remembrance at least—people might have believed!”

“Yet,” Poppa Henry said, “when I heard Cathedral couldn’t easily be reached, I did understand that the magic of Penthya had to have been dealt a heavy blow. Maybe I was the first to see it—how spells would be harder to cast, and how many would lose their access to the Bright altogether. Back then, I didn’t have the skill to create a Remembrance on my own, and with Denthro and my Isabella gone it would have taken Queen Tallis or the SpellMaker to work such a spell with me. I was not willing to go find them.”

Isabella had been so close to death. Poppa Henry kept saying that as if he too needed the clarification, and no matter her strength, what Ophallo had done had been a terrible assault. When she’d cast that Last Breath, she hadn’t had much left, and her spell hadn’t been complete.

Poppa Henry went on to explain that it had taken him many years of further study, done mainly in a world that didn’t even acknowledge the amount of magic it still had in it, but he’d increased his understanding of spells and charms until the truth had finally been revealed. First, whatever life was left had to be carefully gathered in order to contain a Last Breath, but then words had to be thought—also very carefully—so that that spell would know exactly what to do. Once Isabella had her hand held high, and had let the white flow, her spell had been alive—an entity with a direct purpose to save her family—yet the fact that she must not have told it, in precise detail, how to do that had ruined everything.

“I had no clue where my children were,” Poppa Henry said, “and when I finally got back to Castle Watch, they were all I cared about. I had to find them.”

“And did you,” this time it was Jeth who spoke up, Casten beginning to stir as he did.

“I got one,” Poppa Henry said. He smiled down at Ash. “I got my son.”

“But the other,” Amalin asked.

“She,” Poppa Henry began, his voice low, the vaguest of whispers. “She had hair as black as yours, and eyes as brown as her mothers. When I reached Castle Watch, I snuck inside and used a mirror I’d already charmed into being an Unregistered Looking Glass. I’d been pouring over that thing endlessly throughout my entire journey to Watch, but I stayed in shadows, hidden inside dark corners, and poured over that thing even more yet still the essence of my children was hard to locate. This I really didn’t understand…honestly, I didn’t even try to understand it. I just panicked and didn’t realize until it was far too late.”

“What,” Ash asked. She grabbed her grandfather’s hand. “What didn’t you realize?”

“What else your grandmother had done,” Poppa Henry said. “You see, her spell had created a Seal around us, a protection that was so much more than I think she’d intended. Her Last Breath began to shield us from spells of location and the use of any Looking Glass. I spent most of my magic trying to find just one of my children, and when I did…when I found him, I…”

He hadn’t been able to sense his daughter no matter what he’d tried. Poppa Henry almost cried in frustration when he again told everyone near to the Pool that bit. His daughter had been covered not just by the Last Breath and the Seal, but also by something he hadn’t been able to figure out.

But for his son, he finally had success. He caught a glimpse of his boy in the Centaur Woods, right near to the Cliffs of Random where hordes of Errun had still been pouring down into Penthya. He’d wasted no time. Nearly mad with worry, he’d used magic and the fastest animals around, so he could make it into the Centaur Woods in just another week.

Poppa Henry paused after that. He let an awkward silence fall as Casten came more and more awake.

“After I got Steven,” he finally said, “I thought I needed to get him somewhere safe. I don’t know how—maybe it was just the Seal, or maybe it was the Centaurs who’d given their lives to save him—but, somehow, he’d survived the worst of the Errun attacks. I wouldn’t let him be put into anymore danger.

“But I was still so stupid—especially since I’d already formed an idea of what it was that Isabella had done. I just thought…I did…I thought I should do more, so I took my son, and I went. I found the first beam of light that was coming from my world, and I bent it around us so we could travel. It was as easy as taking one step in the Centaur Woods and the next in a field on some farm in Alabama. I just assumed that getting back in would be as easy.”

“It wasn’t,” Amalin asked.

“No, the Seal was too strong,” Poppa Henry said. “For my safety—and for Steven’s safety too—it considered all of Penthya dangerous. It locked me out just as it locked out everyone from Penthya from ever getting to us.”

“But he got to you,” Jeth said as Casten finally opened his eyes and sat up. “How?”

“I think once I was sick, the Seal became weak,” Poppa Henry explained. He stepped in front of Ash as Casten shook his head and looked his way. “And then once I died, that weakness expanded. What kept me from Penthya only worked as long as those who’d escaped from that throne room stayed alive. If I kept breathing, and if my children kept breathing, the Seal would be unbreakable, something I took to heart because if no Penthyan ever came to my doorstep it had to mean I could still find my daughter.”

Ash gave his hand a squeeze. “I have an Aunt.”

Poppa Henry smiled sad. “You do.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sara,” Poppa Henry said. “She’s beautiful.”

Casten found him. As soon as Poppa Henry stopped talking, Casten wasted no time in acting. He reached to his side, tried to find Justice, yet when he realized that that sword wasn’t there, he leapt to his feet and began to fight without it.

From the way the color was draining from his body, Ash thought her grandfather wouldn’t have the energy to do much. But that wasn’t the case. Immediately after Casten was up, her Poppa Henry merely lifted a hand and shot a quick jet of purple towards Amalin and Jeth. He formed walls around them both. He even pushed Ash further behind, Casten clearly someone he wanted to face on his own.

A massive battle, with no weaponry and only clenched fists, appeared to be about to happen. Yet when Casten finally lunged, Poppa Henry did nothing in return. He only ducked every blow, and jumped over every kick, until Casten was out of breath.

“Stop…moving,” Casten said as harsh gasps of air choked his words. “I…I can’t let you get to that water.”

Amalin pounded angry on the barrier that was keeping watch over her. “It isn’t water,” she shouted. “It’s the Pool!”

It was the only other thing Ash allowed herself to look at. Whenever she wasn’t concerned with her Poppa Henry, she flicked her eyes over to see what Amalin and Jeth were doing.

Their barriers, lightly tinted rectangles of purple, were taller than them, but they weren’t that wide; each stopped just a few inches past their shoulders. Either should have been able to walk around what was keeping them back, but no matter what they did—shoving and pushing at every corner or spinning and trying to run off in a different direction—their purple followed. Each section only ever let Amalin get maybe a foot closer, or let Jeth spin a couple inches ahead, before they were returned to exactly where they’d been.

Casten, too, looked over his shoulder. Amalin’s fists were a dull echo that oddly seemed to be coming from far away. From where she stood—and from the level of outrage she was expressing—Amalin should have been easily heard. But barely a sound made it to the Pool.

“What,” Casten continued to gasp. He returned his attention to Poppa Henry as he fell to his knees. “What was that?”

Poppa Henry was before him, but he was at least smart enough to not get too close. His body was almost completely white. It was starting to become devoid of all the telltale features the blue had once made so readily identifiable.

“That Rider wants you to know the Pool isn’t water,” Poppa Henry said. He lifted a hand towards the two barriers. Instantly the purple walls vanished, both Amalin and Jeth stumbling forward as Ash too walked out from behind her grandfather. “But you could barely hear her,” Poppa Henry continued to explain, “because my magic kept that Rider out of our fight. If I’d used all the energy left in my body, she would have been utterly impossible to hear, but I didn’t make my walls nearly as solid as they could have been. I have one more spell I need to cast.”

Casten sighed. He even stayed on his knees as Jeth and Amalin reached his side. “Is it a spell for my death,” he asked, “or do you want your accomplices to hold me down while you have that little girl use my own sword to run me through?”

Casten looked at Jeth and Amalin, but he also peered at Ash with an intensity she didn’t like. He was regarding her with a hurried flare of surprise mixed with a twinge of jealousy. It was right in his eyes. She was still using only one hand to carry Justice. She’d even managed to let it dangle from her fingertips, and Ash saw how that was causing Casten to feel. It was brief, but feelings were there.

“Have you corrupted Justice as well,” Casten went on. He also jumped to his feet, but Amalin and Jeth were ready. They had him by his arms in an instant. “That blade,” he sighed, not struggling one bit in their grasp, “has only ever been carried by the strongest of Light Benders. Some of us have even seen it shine when its true master raises it high. What have you done to it?”

Poppa Henry regarded Casten with amusement as he shook his head and took another step towards him. Finally, Ash made out where her grandfather’s mouth was. She’d known the general area, but much of her grandfather had become such a pure white she hadn’t been sure. But when he took that step forward—and when he also motioned for Jeth and Amalin to let go of what they held—he smiled broad, and full, and it left no doubt over where his lips were.

“Maybe my granddaughter’s ability to carry Justice is proof you’re wrong,” Poppa Henry said. He nodded Ash’s way. “Maybe I’m not such a Bad Blood Traitor after all.”

Casten looked at the two that had let loose of him. “You think having your friends set me free is another sign of your innocence?”

“We’re not his friends, his allies, or his accomplices,” Amalin said. She shoved Casten in the back, Casten whipping around, his long blond hair flying as he whirled. “As a daughter to Duke Galon Charnell, I was in the court of King Elyan, the true king of Bayden, and whenever we suffered from what I thought Henry Ash had done my hatred of him grew. But truth has finally been seen, and now I feel different.”

“You’re from Bayden,” Casten said, “and you held me back? What have you seen?”

“Only a Remembrance,” Amalin said. “It was not Henry James Ash who murdered Isabella Denthro and her father. It was Prince Ophallo.”

Casten shook his head. “Impossible. It…magic proved—”

Poppa Henry laughed. “This I’ve heard,” he said, “only I survived, right? But maybe magic got it wrong.”

“Never,” Casten said. He shook his head again. “We did countless spells. We found bits of Ophallo…he was all over the throne room. Magic proved…it proved Henry was still out there, he had to be the villain.”

“And did magic prove that the Errun can bend light,” Poppa Henry asked.

Casten stared at him. He had a look Ash had noticed before. It was one that Amalin had worn when she too had been confused. Casten had no clue what Poppa Henry was getting at.

“Of course, magic proved,” Casten said, “and those that fled Cathedral said same. The Errun gained the ability to bend because you gave them the power.”

“They’re still bending,” Poppa Henry said, “and I had nothing to do with it. The Errun, maybe all the Errun, have the ability to bend light whenever—”

“Impossible,” Casten said. “They could never—”

Poppa Henry shook his head. “You were in the library! How could you have forgotten that?”

Casten pointed to his leg and then at his chest. “I am healed,” he said, “but I was bleeding and…I don’t know what I…I…I think I fought Chood, but then he said he was Syndon and…and…it was confusion. I don’t know what I remember. I don’t know who I fought. I don’t even know how I got here.”

“I carried you,” Poppa Henry said before he nodded at Jeth. “So did he.”

“Well,” Casten said, “thanks. But I don’t know that for sure. All I do know is what I’ve learned from years and years of study. The Errun bent light once, and only once, when you gave them the power. And for the last four hundred years, there has been nothing, no hint of them doing anything like that again.”

“But they are—”

“Prove me wrong,” Casten said before Poppa Henry could go on. “Do it now. Show me something that says you’re right.”

Poppa Henry smiled. “That’s exactly what I want to do.” He took another slight step forward. “I will take you into a Remembrance. One I just took everyone else into only a few minutes ago.”

Casten stared at Amalin and Jeth before he turned to Ash. “All of you were there,” he asked. “You three, and Henry, were in a Remembrance? Because that is proof. It proves you lie. Just bringing two people into such a spell is something that even the most powerful Light Bender has trouble doing alone. But you three were inside of one that you, Henry, created all by yourself?”

“There were seven of us,” Amalin said, “and do not think me that limited that I do not know what a Remembrance is. We were in it, the three of us plus three other Riders, and Henry Ash, were all taken inside a Remembrance as we stood next to the Pool.”

“And why wasn’t I there,” Casten asked. He pointed to the spot he’d just gotten up from. “If the blue is the Pool, and I woke near it, then why do I not remember any trip into Henry’s memory?”

Poppa Henry took yet another step towards him. “Don’t be an idiot,” he sighed. “You know that as a Light Bender you have been well trained to fight off any magic that could ever slip inside your mind while you’re unconscious. That’s why you weren’t there. Or am I wrong?”

“No,” Casten said, “you’re not wrong.” He sighed as well. “But that is still the problem. You couldn’t bring me into a Remembrance back then, and, unless you can conjure up another, I won’t buy your story now.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to do this,” Poppa Henry said. He took one last step.

He was right on top of Casten who looked oh so glad to finally have him near. To Ash, it seemed as if Casten had hoped that maybe he could succeed in a surprise attack, but her Poppa Henry was the Pool no matter how much of the blue had already left him. Casten only succeeded in finding something that his punch bounced off of.

“What are you,” Casten asked. Poppa Henry reaching out and grabbing his head as he did.

“Just energy,” Poppa Henry explained. “Not as much as I would like, but enough so I can do one last spell.”

“To kill me?”

Poppa Henry pressed his fingers against Casten’s temples. “You keep thinking that” he said, “but no. My last spell will only be a second Remembrance—one done mere minutes after my first, something no single master of the Bright has ever done