Verra dipped her hand into the well and took a drink; then, with no warning, she smashed the staff into the side of the well.
There was the requisite cracking sound, then I was blinded by a flash of pure white light, and I think the ground trembled. When I was able to open my eyes again, there was still some sort of visual distortion, as if the entire area we were in had been bent at some impossible angle, and only Verra could be seen clearly.
Things settled down then, and I saw what appeared to be the body of a female Dragaeran in the black and silver of the House of the Dragon stretched out next to the well. I noticed at once that her hair was blonde—even more rare in a Dragonlord than in a human. Her brows were thin, and the slant of her closed eyes was rather attractive. I think a Dragaeran would have found her very attractive. Verra dipped her hand in again and allowed some of the water to flow into the mouth of her whom I took to be Aliera.
Then Verra smiled at us and walked away.
Aliera began to breathe.
My grandfather, in teaching me fencing, used to make me stand for minutes at a time, watching for the movement of his blade that would give me an opening. I suspect that he knew full well that he was teaching me more than fencing.
When the moment came, I was ready.
Her eyes fluttered open, but she didn’t focus on anything. I decided that she was better looking alive than she’d been dead. Morrolan and I stood there for a moment, then he said softly, “Aliera?”
Her eyes snapped to him. There was a pause before her face responded; when it did she seemed puzzled. She started to speak, stopped, cleared her throat, and croaked, “Who are you?”
He said, “I’m your cousin. My name is Morrolan e’Drien. I am the eldest son of your father’s youngest sister.”
“Morrolan,” she repeated. “Yes. That would be the right sort of name.” She nodded as if he’d passed a test. I took in Morrolan’s face, but he seemed to be keeping any expression off it. Aliera tried to sit up, failed, and her eyes fell on me; narrowed. She turned to Morrolan and said, “Help me.”
He helped her to sit up. She looked around. “Where am I?”
“The Halls of Judgment,” said Morrolan.
Surprise. “I’m dead?”
“Not any more.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain,” said Morrolan.
“Do so,” said Aliera.
“Those two must be related,” I told Loiosh. He sniggered.
“What is the last thing you remember?”
She shrugged, a kind of one-shoulder-and-tilt-of-the-head thing that was almost identical to Morrolan’s. “It’s hard to say.” She closed her eyes. We didn’t say anything. A moment later she said. “There was a strange whining sound, almost above my audible range. Then the floor shook, and the ceiling and walls started to buckle. And it was becoming very hot. I was going to teleport out, and I remember thinking that I couldn’t do it fast enough, and then I saw Sethra’s face.” She paused, looking at Morrolan. “Sethra Lavode. Do you know her?”
“Rather,” said Morrolan.
Aliera nodded. “I saw her face, then I was running through a tunnel—I think that was a dream. It lasted a long time, though. Eventually I stopped running and lay on what seemed to be a white tile floor, and I couldn’t move and didn’t want to. I don’t know how long I was there. Then someone shouted my name—I thought at the time it was my mother. Then I was waking up, and I heard a strange voice calling my name. I think that was you, Morrolan, because then I opened my eyes and saw you.”
Morrolan nodded. “You have been asleep—dead, actually—for, well, several hundred years.”
Aliera nodded, and I saw a tear in her eye. She said very quietly, “It is the reign of a reborn Phoenix, isn’t it?”
Morrolan nodded, seeming to understand.
“I told him it would be,” she said. “A Great Cycle—seventeen Cycles; it had to be a reborn Phoenix. He wouldn’t listen to me. He thought it was the end of the Cycle, that a new one could be formed. He—”
“He created a sea of chaos, Aliera.”
“What?”
I decided that “he” referred to Adron. I doubted that he was to be found in these regions.
“Not as big as the original, perhaps, but it is there—where Dragaera City used to be.”
“Used to be,” she echoed.
“The capital of the Empire is now Adrilankha.”
“Adrilankha. A seacoast town, right? Isn’t that where Kieron’s Tower is?”
“Kieron’s Watch. It used to be there. It fell into the sea during the Interregnum.”
“Inter—Oh. Of course. How did it end?”
“Zerika, of the House of the Phoenix, retrieved the Orb, which somehow landed here, in the Paths of the Dead. She was allowed to return with it. I helped her,” he added.
“I see,” she said. Morrolan sat down next to her. I sat down next to Morrolan. Aliera said, “I don’t know Zerika.”
“She was not yet born. She’s the only daughter of Vernoi and, um, whoever it was she married.”
“Loudin.”
“Right. They both died in the Disaster.”
She nodded, then stopped. “Wait. If they both died in the explosion, and Zerika wasn’t born when it happened, how could ...?”
Morrolan shrugged. “Sethra had something to do with it. I’ve asked her to explain it, but she just looks smug.” He blinked. “I get the impression that, whatever it was she did, she was too busy doing it to rescue you as thoroughly as she’d have liked. I guess you were the second priority after making sure there could be an Emperor. Zerika is the last Phoenix.”
“The last Phoenix? There can’t be another? Then the Cycle is broken. If not now, for the future.”
“Maybe,” said Morrolan.
“Can there be another Phoenix?”
“How should I know? We have the whole Cycle to worry about it. Ask me again in a few hundred thousand years when it starts to matter.”
I could see from Aliera’s expression that she didn’t like this answer, but she didn’t respond to it. There was a silence, then she said, “What happened to me?”
“I don’t understand entirely,” said Morrolan. “Sethra managed to preserve your soul in some form, though it became lost. Eventually—I imagine shortly after Zerika took the Orb—an Athyra wizard found you. He was studying necromancy. I don’t think he realized what he had. You were tracked down, and—”
“Who tracked me down?”
“Sethra and I,” he said, watching her face. He glanced at me quickly, then said, “And there were others who helped, some time ago.”
Aliera closed her eyes and nodded. I hate it when they talk over my head. “Did you have any trouble getting me back?”
Morrolan and I looked at each other. “None to speak of,” I said.
Aliera looked at me, then looked again, her eyes narrow. She stared hard, as if she were looking inside of me. She said, “Who are you?”
“Vladimir Taltos, Baronet, House Jhereg.”
She stared a little longer, then shook her head and looked back at Morrolan.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Never mind.” She stood up suddenly, or, rather, tried, then sat down. She scowled. “I want to get out of here.”
“I believe they will let Vlad leave. If so, he will help you.”
She looked at me, then back at Morrolan. “What’s wrong with you?”
“As a living man, I am not allowed to return from the Paths of the Dead. I shall remain here.”
Aliera stared at him. “Like hell you will. I’ll see you dead first.”
It’s hard for me to pin down the point at which I stopped considering myself to be someone’s enforcer who sometimes did “work” and started considering myself a free-lance assassin. Part of it was that I worked for several different people during a short period of time during and after the war, including Welok himself, so this made things confusing.
Certainly those around me began to think of me that way before it occurred to me, but I don’t think my own thinking changed until I had developed professional habits and a good approach to the job.