“It’s magical,” Val said, sprawled easily along most of a seat and
picking out the almonds from a can of roasted nuts. “If you hadn’t done this
thing or that, if you had been two fighting squares away from me instead of
next to me, if you hadn’t announced a style of fighting I’d never heard of—
”
Pierce’s face burned. “Deli Style fighting. I can’t believe I invented
that. Lucky for me it was you. Anyone else would have just smeared me into the
grass and left me there to be dumped back into the kitchen.”
His brother’s pale blue eyes flicked at him. “It was perfect. The way you
used that knife—”
“You asked me to show you. You spoke to me.”
“You used it the way our mother did. You unburied memories.”
“You asked my name.”
“It was your mother in you,” Leith said. “Both of you. You recognized her
magic in each other.” He reached out, took the can from Val. He shook his
head, gazing at his sons as he chewed. “I can’t believe the pair of you. I
thought I had done only one good thing in my life. Now I find I have done two.
” He passed the can to Pierce. “Did you talk to Heloise?”
Pierce nodded. Leith waited while he stirred the mix, located a cashew, and
ate it. He said finally, “She isn’t very happy with me. I think she didn’t
really expect me to find you. She thought Severluna would terrify me, and I’d
run back home. And it did. But I didn’t.” He paused, added wryly, “I didn’
t have time to run.”
“Does she know that you’re with us? Heading north toward the coast highway?
Does she expect to see you?”
Pierce shook the can, peered into it, looking for words. “I told her we were
traveling north together. I couldn’t explain the quest—I wasn’t listening
very well at the Assembly. She didn’t say much. She didn’t ask if we would
be going as far as Cape Mistbegotten.”
Leith shifted. “She wouldn’t want to see me, but I’m sure she’d want to
see you and Val. Maybe you could—”
“She’s a sorceress,” Val reminded his father. “We’re here with you.
We’re on a quest, not a vacation. If she wants to, I think she could find us.
Though she hasn’t exactly made the effort so far.” He took the can from
Pierce, rattled it, his eyes wide as he gazed into it. “She left me with you
and never looked back.”
“Maybe that’s why she let me go,” Pierce said abruptly. “So that I would
find you both. She couldn’t come looking for you. She is too proud. And too—
and too hurt. But now she knows that we are all together. Val is right, I
think. She has her ways. If she wants to, she’ll use them.”
The driver’s voice came over the intercom from behind the closed glass
partition between them. “Sirs, this is the last largish town before we start
climbing. Do you want me to stop somewhere for lunch? Once we get into the
mountains, no telling what we’ll find.”
They stopped.
In the midafternoon, surrounded by mile after mile of huge trees marching up
and down peaks and valleys holding only hints of civilization, a glimpse of a
door, a sign, an abandoned fuel station, the steadfast vehicle ran aground.
One by one screens flicked off, lights failed, the car slowed, drifted. The
driver, his cursing becoming audible, got the partition between them half-
opened before it, too, stopped moving. A pickup careened around them, honking
wildly. They were in the fast lane of a steep, curving, four-lane highway,
rapidly losing power and fortunately on a downslope. The driver eased the limo
across the road, avoiding the swift cars dodging to the left and right of
them. It settled finally onto an unpaved pullout as a semi peeled around them,
making a noise like an indignant whale.
The driver spoke to the dashboard. No one answered. He pushed this, flicked
that. Val leaned through the partition, making suggestions, while Pierce tried
a door, and Leith pulled out his cell.
The door opened, to Pierce’s relief, but the phone screen remained black.
The driver pulled off his crested uniform cap, threw it on the floor, then
picked it up, put it back on, and turned.
“Sorry, sirs. I don’t have a clue what to make of this.”
Val looked at his own phone. “It’s a dead zone,” he said curiously.
“Nothing tech works.”
“Everyone else is still moving,” Leith said tersely. He got out, roamed
around the car with his phone.
“Sorcery, then.”
“Might as well be,” the driver said, exasperated. “This vehicle was
thoroughly tested before the wyvern on its hood got a look out the garage
door.”
He tried his own phone, then got out and waved at passing traffic until a
Greenwing small enough to fit in the pullout behind the limo stopped. The
driver bent down to talk to the young women in it. Val joined him promptly.
Pierce got out, stood looking around, half expecting to see Heloise sitting on
a branch above them.
Gigantic pillars of trees stood tranquilly on the steep mountain, maybe
napping in the warm, golden light, maybe commenting in slow tree-thoughts on
the grand vehicle that had hobbled to a halt in their shadows. In the distance
between two high peaks, he glimpsed the sea.