Yet despite being here for nearly a quarter cycle, she still had to resist an urge to shrink back from him a little. Part of her still reacted with the awe and respect due to an Angel. Part of her hadn’t forgiven him for deceiving her. Both parts she could ignore.
But she was all too aware of his power and age, and that he had killed and would do so again to stay alive, protect his people and maintain control over the worlds. She was not na?ve or foolish enough to trust him utterly. And yet she had felt–still felt–that accepting his invitation had been the most logical, fair thing to do.
Except in the middle of the night, when she woke thinking she was still in the room of the weavers’ workshop she’d shared with Betzi only to jolt fully awake with the knowledge of where she really was. Then the only way she could stop worrying she had made a mistake was to tell herself she may as well continue to behave as if she hadn’t until the moment she was proven wrong.
If Valhan was reading this from her mind now, he showed no sign of it.
“Dahli,” he said, then looked at her. “Rielle. How are the lessons progressing?”
“Well enough,” Dahli replied. “We were about to resume them.”
Valhan shook his head. “No lessons today. I have something to show Rielle.”
Dahli’s eyebrows rose. He nodded and took a step back. “I await your return.”
She stared at him, then at Valhan, and as the ruler of worlds extended a hand she mentally shook free of her surprise and took it.
This is new, she thought. It can’t be lessons in immortality. Too soon for that. And he said he wanted to show me something, not teach me.
His grip was firm. The Arrival Hall brightened and faded to white, then darkened to an unrelenting blackness that she remembered from her journey to his world. A green world flashed by, then a landscape of ice. Heat like walking too close to a fire touched her skin briefly, and then an immense ocean came into sight, waves like mountains surging far below and an orange sky above. Finally they stopped at the top of an enormous tower.
“Can people live in the worlds we just passed through?” she asked after she’d caught her breath.
“No.”
“Is there any other route to your world?”
“No.”
“So how did you find it?”
“From records stored on other worlds. It was inhabited and abandoned long before I was born.”
She frowned. “So has it ever been fully occupied since you found it?”
“Once, for a few hundred cycles.”
His fingers tightened on her hand as a warning that he was about to move on. The forest disappeared, and then several worlds flashed in and out of sight in rapid succession. When they had remained at a location for more than an instant, she guessed they had arrived at their destination.
He let go of her hand. She almost wished he hadn’t. They stood on top of a wall so high it made her dizzy to look at the city below. The metropolis stretched out so far that, as her eyes travelled up to the horizon, she wondered if it ever ended. Perhaps this world was one entire city. She stared into the distance and made out, almost invisible in the haze, a shadowy line of mountains.
Valhan turned around to look behind them and she followed suit–nervously, as the wall was one step wide at the top with nothing but the man beside her to grab hold of if she lost her balance. On the other side, but not so far below, lay a complex of buildings set out in a formal and grand arrangement. Quartets of men in identical clothing walked in step around a central square. People strolled or hurried between buildings alone and in groups. She wondered if any would notice her and Valhan, but no faces turned in their direction, and none stopped to point at two people standing in such a precarious location.
In the corner of her eye she saw Valhan look at her. She turned to see his eyebrows rise slightly, inviting a response or question.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“The city of Wuhrr in the world of Puht.”
“It’s huge. Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“This, but not only this.” He looked down at the formal structures. “You can read the mind of a place by reading the minds of its occupants. Reach out to the people here. Brush against their thoughts. Listen when something interests you. In time you will gather a sense of their values and expectations, and a little of their history.”
Intrigued, she braced her legs and tried not to think of the drop behind her. Selecting a structure, she sought out a mind within it. She found one instantly.
A man. A guard on duty. He was bored. Nobody had passed this way in hours. He was entertaining himself thinking how he would spend the night with his wife.