throat tickled from the damage already done, there was no new pain. The contrast between firelight and night-darkness deepened, colours shifting through the swirling air. The fire brightened, but Rel didn't even flinch.
Some subtle twitch in the scene drew his eye, and he let Clearsight guide him to the change; Taslin's light dimming. "Stop!" he shouted, the word spinning into the air to be blown aside by a gust from the fire, then coughed again. Immediately as the sound reached Taslin - and Rel's Gift showed him the exact path of the wave through the air - the light jumped a foot to the left, restored to its proper level, as the future adjusted to the shift in the Gift-Giver's intent. A vein at the inside corner of Rel's right eye pulsed once, gently, through the cold haze of his Gift's grip.
The moment the light slid into motion, it faded. Rel stuttered over his warning, but managed not to send another potentially lethal jab of Wild Power at Taslin's back. The light jumped back to the right, further ahead, and Rel hastened his step to match.
His pulse grew heavy as the Sherim tightened again, its membrane seeming to weigh on the insides of his arteries. Soon, he'd have to begin his mindwalk or his body would drag him back to the First Realm. That was going to be a nightmare while minding Taslin's progress.
A few steps later, the violet light dimmed again, and Rel called his warning. This time, it took two more attempts before Taslin found a path through. She led him right up to the edge of the fire, the Sherim stroking his arms with salacious, gossamer fingers, sucking away the logic that would have burned him. The heat became a distant thing, as irrelevant as the pine forest around the clearing, but surrounding him just as much.
How did Pevan enjoy the Sherim's touch? It tore at his burns, pain spreading across his seared cheek and recoiling from the otherworldly ice in his eyelids. At his eyes, the tightness felt much like a fever's heat, squeezing tears up until they threatened to spill over. He squinted, focussing on Taslin's purple orb ahead, to the exclusion of the dazzling firelight.
He clenched his fists despite the pain of cracking burns on the back of his fingers, holding his arms at his sides. If he tried to dash the fluid from his eyes, his Clearsight would lock up the moment he saw his own hand. He couldn't wipe his eyes.
Why not? If he still had eyes, he ought to be able to wipe them-
Taslin's light dimmed again, snapping Rel out of his mindwalk. It took him a precious half-second to shout warning - Clearsight showed the complex causal ripples of the delay, a spray of smaller light orbs vanishing into the fire in all directions. Still, Taslin stopped in time. She didn't change tack immediately, and the delay reassembled Rel's mind.
The night was gone, consumed by white-orange walls of turbulent flame. He was standing in the middle of the fire, but it had grown, higher and higher until only a narrow disc of black sky remained above him. He fought down panic, wiggled his fingers to reassure himself of the Sherim's protection. The motion sent fresh cracks through his blistered skin, but he ignored the pain.
The Sherim tingled all the way down his gullet. Breathing didn't seem to create any more of a problem than standing in the fire, however much his brain protested the thought. He could barely feel the heat at all; Clearseeing was sucking the warmth out of him more efficiently than the fire could get it in through the Sherim's skin.
A second and a half in the future, Taslin started forward and died almost instantly. Rel's shout of warning emerged as a garbled mess of compromise between 'Stop!' and 'Help!', but he got the message across. Taslin's voice, battered by the Sherim's fury, drifted back to him with a mute "Thank you". This close to the Second Realm, she was probably sensing his mind, and his confused, desperate emotions, more than his words.
That made him pause, frowning. A week ago, the thought of a Wilder, even a Gift-Giver, listening in on his thoughts would have brought him to a state of rich fury. Here, though, with too many lives in the balance, it didn't bother him at all. Weak of him to surrender principle so easily. He gritted his teeth, trying to hold back the memory of Dora's... whatever she'd become, trapped in the Abyss.
Taslin's sign reappeared, right in front of his face. He flinched, but managed to keep his eyes open. He couldn't feel anything from the sign at all. Again, it vanished almost the moment the Gift-Giver started moving.
This time at least, he managed not to garble the warning. It came out as a black crescent that shattered almost the moment it met air. He felt as if he could almost sense Taslin's frustration at yet another path coming to nothing. Keshnu could ill afford these delays.
Rel bowed his head slightly and looked away to one side. "Should we try the other route again?"
"I cannot afford to lose you." Taslin spoke quickly, her words thick and heavy. There was nothing of the Second Realm in her voice at all. "The risk is too great. I will find us a way."
"But Keshnu..." He couldn't bring himself to complete the thought. Instead, he flexed his hands again, forcing himself up against the pain of his burns.
"Keshnu is still here. I can shield him for now. You are more vulnerable. You must begin your mindwalk before we go much further."
"I know." Rel hated himself for the sound of the mumble, and the dingy blob of tar that the words turned into as they left his lips. "But what if there's no way through this route?"
The light bobbed, interference from the Sherim sending evanescent glints of not-quite-yellow and not-quite-turquoise slithering towards its core. Taslin's voice, when it came, sounded so like a knife being drawn that Rel flinched. "I will find a way."
It took another failed attempt before she managed to lead him past that knot. He followed her with the bitter taste of relief in his mouth. The writhing sheets of fire around him stretched out higher, the draught growing past gales to an almost tidal force. Through the protection of the Sherim's tightening grip, the wind did little more than ruffle his hair, but he could see it in the gyration of the flames.
His eyes were freezing despite the fire. Was he really in danger? If Dora found out how much Keshnu had been put at risk for the sake of sparing Rel, she'd be furious. She'd developed a strange attachment to the Gift-Giver back in Vessit. He needed to ask her about that when she was free again. Had to get her free first.
Taslin's sign vanished, and he called her back. If only things could be so easy with Dora. For that matter, he needed to restore contact with Pevan. Dora wasn't the only one with strange attachments. She'd been cagey about what happened, and Rel doubted it was anything he'd approve of, in either case.
Tracing the ripples of Taslin's path, he took a few long strides' run-up and ran up the curve of one of the fire-walls. Running up. Until he got Keshnu to safety, he was still running up obligations. Probably running up more debt to Dora, given her attachment. Given her attachment to Van Raighan, Pevan would probably not come running to help him either, but he needed her.
Needed her? Again, he called a warning as Taslin's future began to fade. He needed her, that was for sure. She could help Keshnu in ways far beyond him. She made her way down against the flow of the fire as if skiing, and he followed her. Perhaps not all her ways were beyond him.
Some were way beyond him. In total disconnection from the Sherim's rage, a chill ran through him. What if Dora couldn't forgive his shortcomings? He'd done such a bad job of Seeing. His eyes had produced only meaningless gibberish, like the way Taslin's footprints made ripples across the tips of the flames, as if she was dancing across them.
He followed her, warned her to go up, not down at the far end. His sight had been so useless, but it was all the use he had.
From the Second Realm, a voice echoed, splitting over itself until it became a chorus of thousands. "Close your eyes and mindwalk!"
Yes, if his sight was so worthless, he was better without it. Better without.
Darkness.
Then, gently, a voice that settled in his ears like eider-down. "It is good to be home."
Home? They'd arrived?
Scattered thought failed to fit that image. Inconsiste
nt sensation protruded first - lumpy ground against his back, the sting of burned hands and cheeks, the absent sound of a crackling hearth or mother's hissing and bubbling cooking pots. On the other hand, the headache fit, if he'd been away from home for a while.
How had he gotten burned? There had been a fire, a big one, but it hadn't burned him. His memory was playing tricks, but he remembered it surrounding him, embracing him. Some sort of illusion, maybe. From the feel of it, it would be a bad idea to reach for Clearsight and try to sort out the truth. He needed rest.
He opened his eyes, all the same. The brightness stung, the world seeming to be made out of jagged colours from an alien spectrum. He blinked a few times, but his pupils felt like someone had taken a rasp to them. Maybe there had been a fire.
That cut through the haze. He catapulted up to half-sitting, eyes scouring the chaos for something recognisable. He lay on what seemed to be a petrified forest floor, leaf shapes vaguely visible in the hard grey mass. Here and there roots ran, gnarled and knobbly, across the ground, but there were no trees. The sky shifted and oozed, a mix of green and orange and something else.
Instinct led his gaze to the line that divided colour from greyness, stark and clear as a horizon. Sure enough, off to his right somewhere were a cluster of thin black diamonds, stuck deep in sky and