“I learned how to pattern-shift from this.”
Valhan’s hand. Qall had accessed the memories in Valhan’s hand. Or was this Valhan, accessing Qall’s memories in order to pretend to be him?
“But that takes many, many days and a great deal of magic.”
“Usually, yes. I didn’t have to imprint anything into magic, since the pattern was already in here. I just copied it into my mind.” He tilted his head slightly. “If I was Valhan, wouldn’t I have destroyed this as soon as I’d been resurrected? Wouldn’t I have killed you and be ordering everyone about back at the battleground?” He closed the box and set it aside.
All her instincts told her this was Qall. The more he spoke and moved, the more she was sure it was not Valhan who knelt beside her. If I’m wrong, there’s nothing I can do about it. I have no choice but to play along with whatever game Valhan is playing. So I may as well act as if he is Qall for now, and see if something happens to convince me either way. Pushing to a sitting position, she waited for a short spell of giddiness to pass.
“Take it slowly,” he warned.
“I know,” she replied, unintentionally curt.
He chuckled. The sound sent a shiver down her spine. It was the sound of an older man. A more mature, confident man than Qall. And yet Valhan would never have expressed such rueful affection. Qall could have grown up a bit since he abandoned me. If it is him. She slowly climbed to her feet.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
She shrugged. “You couldn’t have known I wasn’t ageless any more.”
“No … Well, yes, but I mean for leaving you in that world.”
“Ah.” She frowned. “Why did you?”
“Hiding wasn’t working. We’d been running away for less than a cycle and Dahli’s searchers had already tracked us down. When it came to fighting, you were a terrible teacher. I know you did the best you could, but you’ve never been in battle. I read everything I could about Dahli and Tyen from you, then decided I’d rather try to deal with Dahli than wait and hope my family stayed safe. After all, I was stronger than him and could read his mind, and he couldn’t kill me or he’d lose Valhan’s vessel. The only advantage he had over me was that I would never be able to stop his people killing the Travellers in time if he gave the order. I can’t be in more than one place at once. I knew he’d use you against me if he could. Trapping you in a dead world was the only way I could think of to keep him from using you against me.” He paused. “How did you escape?”
“By becoming a Maker again.” There was no point hiding the truth when he could simply read it from her mind. “Which is why I’m not ageless any more. It uses the same part of the mind.”
“You have become more than an ordinary Maker,” he said, now reading her mind. “Vella told me there’s a prophecy that says if a Maker becomes ageless, the worlds will be torn apart.”
At the mention of Vella, a tingle had run across her skin, but she was not ready to ask about Tyen. “Ulma said the same, but she said it was a very old prophecy and probably not very reliable.”
He nodded. “Valhan didn’t believe in Millennium’s Rule, though he encouraged others to so that the rebels would come to fight him and instead rid him of the allies. I don’t yet know if he knew of this prophecy about Makers. Dahli and Tyen don’t believe prophecies are true predictors of the future either.”
He doesn’t yet know? Rielle wasn’t sure what to make of that. “So Tyen let you read his book?” she asked, remembering that Vella could read the minds of everyone she touched. If he touched Vella now, she’d know if he was Qall or Valhan …
“No, I asked him to ask her some questions.”
“About what?”
“I’ll tell you later. We must keep moving. Dahli’s bound to follow us.” He bent and picked up the box, then held out his hand.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see when we get there.”
Again she noticed the new confidence in him. Ignoring the questions crowding her mind, she took his hand.
Qall—she could not help thinking of him as Qall—travelled quickly, but stopped regularly enough for her to catch her breath. They passed through dead worlds and rich, battle-scarred landscapes and scenes of prosperity. Some were familiar; most were not.
Then Qall began forging a new path through the place between. They arrived in the midst of cruel-looking peaks in a dead world. After she had caught her breath, he did not leave again, but skimmed over the mountains and across a desert, descending to a large, low dune in a desert painted gold by a rising sun. In the distance, the white walls of a city nestled into the crook of a silvery river. Rielle stared at it as they arrived, wondering why it reminded her so much of …
“Fyre!”
“Yes,” Qall replied. “I saw it in his memories.”
He’d brought her home. The realisation filled her with alarm. Did he think she wanted to be here? She stretched her senses out, seeking magic, and found none.
“This is still a dead world.”
“Not completely. Some magic has been generated since Valhan stripped the world to leave.”
“But so little it is barely detectable. Why did you bring me back?”
“So somebody knows where I am living.”
“You?” She turned to stare at him. “Here?”
“Yes. I am known here. Not as who I am, or as Valhan, but as someone most people will not harm.” He frowned, but in concentration rather than anxiety or anger. His hair darkened and gained a sheen. The light that reflected off its glossy surface was tinted a dark, familiar blue. His skin was lightening to white. The Angel, returned to her world.
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to live here?”
“Because I need time to sort out which memories are mine and which are his without people who knew him influencing me.” Qall lifted the box. “Because I want to be sure, if Valhan’s personality does overcome mine, that he’ll be stuck here, and will grow old and die. Before I absorb any more of his memories, I’ll use up the magic I have—I’ll probably need it to establish myself here, though I’ll save a little in case of trouble but not enough to leave the worlds again.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Valhan found that a vessel whose memories weren’t erased contains both identities, each of which struggle to dominate. He thought that if he imprinted his mind on another’s he would win eventually, since he’d lived longer and had more memories. As you know, he went on to develop a way to empty the mind of a vessel first, and his tests showed it was more reliable.” Qall shrugged. “I learned this by accessing his memories. I also saw that doing so would take too long. The battle would be over before I discovered everything I needed to know. So I sought and absorbed only the memories I thought would be useful—enough to mimic Valhan so I could order Dahli to stop the fight, and to learn pattern shifting in case I needed to heal someone or completely change my appearance.”
A chill went through Rielle. “You took a great risk.”
“Yes. But I reduced it as much as I could. Even so, those memories … changed me.” He looked down at the box, his face shifting into an expression of longing. “I want to access his memories again to find out who I was, but I dare not look until I am sure I am in control. What if he is lurking there, waiting for me to try, ready to overcome my identity? I must make sure that, if he does, he stays trapped in this world.”
Rielle nodded slowly. Her heart was lightening. Valhan would not strand himself here willingly. Valhan would want to regain control of the worlds. “It really is you.”
“Mostly,” he replied, looking up at her.
His eyes were bright with pain. He lifted the box and lifted the hand out. “It is extraordinary, this thing. He made it before the rebels confronted him, so he was walking around with a dead hand for a day or so. The information in it is copied hundreds, maybe thousands of times, so just this finger—” He took hold of the smallest digit and bent it
until it broke away from the hand with a dry tearing sound. “—holds many copies of the same information imprinted in the rest.”
Rielle could not suppress a shudder at the sight of him casually breaking off the finger. He stowed it within his clothes.
“Dahli decided not to turn me into Valhan,” Qall continued. “Partly that was Tyen and Zeke’s influence. They both thought that if there was another way to resurrect Valhan, Dahli ought to try it. So he unlocked his memory of the hand’s location and consulted Valhan’s memories and came up with the idea of persuading me to absorb Valhan’s memories. He thought that if I understood Valhan better, if part of me became him, I’d want to help him resurrect himself. Dahli’s great weakness is his belief that, if we all knew Valhan as he did, we’d all love him as much.” Qall looked up at Rielle. “Which is why your betrayal angered Dahli so much. You had the chance to understand Valhan, both in person and through his memories during a resurrection, in a way few ever did, and yet you refused to bring him back.”
“He wanted to kill me.”
“It wasn’t just that,” he reminded her. “You couldn’t let him kill an innocent boy. For that, I owe you a great deal.”
“You owe me nothing. Just don’t …” She hesitated, realising the burden she could easily put on his shoulders.
“Don’t become the monster Valhan was,” Qall finished. “You didn’t place that burden on me. I did. All I can promise is that I will do my best not to. And that is why I am here. If I am to gain even a fraction of his knowledge, I must risk that I become more like him.”
She frowned. “You don’t need to absorb his memories to find out who you were.”
He nodded. “That’s true. What is also true is that I will not survive long in the worlds without the knowledge he had. I am, after all, his Successor.”
“Prophecies aren’t—”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re real or not, if people believe in them, and act on them. When I return—if I return—I want to help the worlds.”
“That’s not as easy as you think.”
“I don’t think it’s easy,” he assured her. “I expect to fail. I also expect to succeed. What I can’t do is not try. And my chances of doing good will be greater if I know what Valhan knew.”
“Or you’ll become Valhan. Don’t take that risk. Take the slower path. Gain that knowledge yourself.”
“That would take a thousand cycles.” His smile was crooked, and faded quickly. He drew a deep breath, then let it out again slowly. “Will you come back here once every cycle to check on me? When I’m ready, if I am still myself, you can take me out of this world again. Will you do that?”
“Yes, but I can do better than that. I can stay here and look after you.”
“No.”
“You need someone with you who knows you. Someone who can tell you who you really are.”
“Which cannot be you,” Qall said firmly. “You knew Valhan. Your expectations of him will shape me as much as those of Qall.”
Rielle opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn’t deny it. Every time she saw him, she saw Valhan, even if for the tiniest fraction of a moment. Enough to send a frission of fear and fascination through her. Qall was watching her. There must be another way, she thought.
“What if you never read my mind?” she suggested. “I—”
Qall’s gaze shifted away. “And here they come,” he said in a low voice, his lips pressing into a thin line.
Turning, she saw two shadows resolving rapidly into human shape, then gaining detail. A man and a woman.
“Tyen,” Rielle said as she recognised the man. “I suppose he expects me to forgive him after he saved us.”
“He was always on your side. Give him the chance to explain himself.”
She looked at Qall. He appeared to want to say more, but his attention shifted back to the arrivals. The woman was Ankari. Rielle wondered where Baluka and Lejihk were. As Tyen and Ankari arrived, she read the answer from the latter: they were back in Dahli’s base world. Ankari, seeing Tyen push out of the world to chase Rielle, had followed and grabbed his arm.
Tyen started forward slowly.
“Let her go,” he said.
Qall smiled. “She is not my prisoner.”
“He’s Qall,” Rielle told him.
Tyen’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure he’s not—?”
“As sure as I—”
“Dahli,” Qall interrupted, his tone dark.
The three of them looked to Qall, then spun to face the direction he was looking in. A new shadow was resolving nearby. The Raen’s most loyal was expressionless, but an unmistakable gleam of triumph and eagerness lit his eyes as he arrived. He glanced at Tyen and Ankari, then stepped forward.
“Raen,” he said, bowing.
“Dahli,” Qall replied. “I have done as you wanted. I have absorbed Valhan’s memories.” He lifted the hand, his grip hiding the missing finger. “It is done.”
A flare of orange burst from the hand, spreading rapidly as it consumed the desiccated flesh, reducing it to ashes that fell to the sand.
Dahli froze, eyes moving from the fire to Qall and back again, over and over. When all of the hand had turned to ash, Qall opened his fingers and let the last of it fall, and Dahli’s gaze settled on his face.
“I am not Valhan,” Qall said.
Dahli’s face hardened. “No,” he acknowledged. “Not wholly. Yet you have him within you now.”
“Some of his memories, yes,” Qall agreed. “No more than that. The mind can only store so much. Certainly not every moment of a thousand cycles. Valhan chose what he retained or cast off for centuries before he created the hand, and in order to store what he considered vital, he sacrificed much.”
“Like the ability to love,” Ankari added.
All turned towards the woman.
“Ulma told me,” she explained. “They were lovers many hundreds of cycles ago. She said even love can lose value when you have experienced it many times. Survival becomes more important. So Valhan told her. He thought power was more essential to survival than all else, so he sacrificed the better human traits in order to hold it.”
“He sacrificed more than that,” Qall continued, turning back to Dahli. “But he did retain the ability to value order and loyalty. He regarded you, Dahli, with a respect that was as close to love as he was able to feel. He did not deserve it in return, because he used your love against you. To make you choose to do things your conscience would never have allowed you to do otherwise.”
Dahli straightened, his expression becoming flinty. “Don’t you dare assume to understand—”
“I dare,” Qall said, raising his voice to cut Dahli off, “because you too have used love as an excuse to do harm. You used my love to blackmail me. Tyen, Rielle and I know you had no choice but to serve Valhan. We know your grief at his death was terrible. But though you were free from him, you continued to be ruthless and murderous in his name. You threatened to kill not just the family that raised me, but an entire race. You brought about a battle in which hundreds died, many in a cruel and agonising trap.” Qall’s voice wavered, and he paused to swallow before staring down at Dahli again. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“No!” Rielle gasped. “Once you kill—”
“Qall, you don’t have to—” Tyen said at the same time, but they both stopped as Qall raised a hand to silence them. Oddly, the imperious gesture did not remind Rielle of Valhan. This is Qall. Only he can resolve this grievance with Dahli, because to leave it to others to settle on his behalf is to be like Valhan.
“Tell me, Dahli.”
The sorcerer glanced at Rielle and Tyen. Realising how vulnerable he was, he immediately thought of the people he had in place, ready to kill the Travellers if he died or disappeared for more than a quarter cycle. Then he realised that if Qall killed him nobody would know, and the Restorers could possibly prevent most of the attacks on Travellers in a quarter cycle.
A
nd it was exactly this kind of threat that angered Qall.
And nothing would be gained from it now. There was no chance of resurrecting Valhan. Only fragments of him existed within Qall. Not enough to remake even a shadow of the man.
His mouth opened and closed, but made no sound. His gaze lowered to the ground at Qall’s feet. Looking closer, Rielle saw the fear and pain within him. Even as he acknowledged that Qall and the worlds had every right to want him dead, he could not help trying to justify his actions. I had no choice but to serve the Raen, even after his death! But that was a lie. Zeke had pointed that out. I should have listened …
“Zeke saw the remnants of conscience and morality in you,” Tyen told him. “He gave you a chance to be the person you would have been if not for Valhan. I doubt many people would.”
And I drove him away, Dahli thought. The guilt and regret lay heavy. He’ll never forgive me. Nor do I expect it. He straightened his back. I have lost. I have failed Valhan, and missed every chance to be free from him. I will face the consequences with dignity. “Will you tell him what happened to me, Tyen?” he asked in a strained voice.
“Of course,” Tyen replied. “Once the Travellers are safe. If he can forgive my part in this, he and I still have the insectoid problem to solve.”
“He was close to a solution,” Dahli said, then managed a smile. “He has a remarkable mind.”
“You do not deserve him,” Qall said. “But perhaps he could come to forgive you.” He drew a deep breath. “Do you understand that Valhan cannot be resurrected now?”
Dahli looked down at the ash and nodded. All the plots and hopes that he had kept himself occupied with unravelled. The great hole of emptiness he had dreaded opened up within him, but to his surprise it did not grow to consume him. It was not infinitely deep. He felt … hope.
Is this what Zeke has given me? he asked himself. Surely someone so young and unworldly could not have managed to get past my guard. And there was something else. Something he’d never considered before. Freedom. He could be anything he wanted. He could be anything Zeke wanted. The kind of person he had never thought he could be again.