The dishes were done. Travis pulled the sink plug, leaned on the counter, and stared as the dishwater swirled down the drain. It circled around and around before vanishing.
Spirals are symbols of great power, spoke the echo of Jack Graystone’s voice in his mind. They attract magic, and trap it within them.
There had been a vast spiral inside the White Tower of the Runebinders, Travis remembered. It had drawn them into its center, and there he had first come face‑to‑face with wraithlings. The pale beings had come to take the Stone of Twilight from him; they had reached out spindly hands, and in their touch was death. Only then, without even knowing how, Travis had bound the tower’s broken foundation stone. The tower’s magic had awakened; the wraithlings were destroyed.
Looking back, Travis supposed that was the moment he became a wizard. However, that life was over. He wasn’t a wizard anymore. The Great Stones were a world away, on Eldh; he had given them to Master Larad for safekeeping. True, there was magic here on Earth, but it was a faint shadow of what it was on Eldh. Travis hadn’t even attempted a spell since the day he and Beltan came to Earth.
Yet if he wasn’t a wizard anymore, why did it feel like he was the thing trapped in the spiral?
Until it happened, Travis had never believed he could be so happy as he had been these last three years in London. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t someplace just because that was where he had ended up, but rather because he had chosen to be there. To be here, with Beltan. Yet he couldn’t leave the past behind, not completely. Jack’s voice still spoke in his mind from time to time, along with the voices of all the Runelords who had gone before him. Travis would never truly escape the spiral of power that had drawn him in, that had taken him to Eldh.
Nor were the voices the only reminders of what he had been, for sometimes his right hand ached to hold the Great Stones again, and if he looked in those moments, he would see a silvery symbol glimmer on his palm: three crossed lines. It would vanish after a few seconds, but it was always there, just beneath the surface. Waiting.
Once a thing is made, it cannot be unmade without breaking it.That was what Olrig–the Old God who was also the Worldsmith and Sia and the hag Grisla–had said to Master Larad, when Larad asked to be a Runelord no longer. The same was true for Travis. He could not change what he was.
Only what was he, exactly?
First Jack had made him into a Runelord. Then the fires of the Great Stone Krondisar had burned him to nothing before making him anew. And there was one more transformation that had changed him. . . .
A compulsion came over Travis, so swift and strong that a small paring knife was in his hand before he realized what he was doing. He longed to see blood, to see if here on Earth theywould come if he called. He pressed the knife against the skin of his left forearm . . .
A noise broke the spell; he jerked the knife away. It had left a white mark in his flesh, but it had not drawn blood. He swallowed the sickness in his throat, then forced himself to set down the knife.
Out in the living room, the blare of the television ceased. A moment later came the sound of the door opening. He thought he heard a low voice saying something. Then the door shut. Beltan must have told whoever it was to go away.
Travis picked up a damp plate and a dish towel to give his trembling hands something to do, then headed into the living room. “Who was at the door, Beltan? I didn’t hear you–”
The plate slipped from his wet fingers. It seemed to make no sound as it struck the floor, shattering into a dozen white shards.
“You look well, Travis,” Vani said. Beltan stood just behind her, but Travis couldn’t look at him. He stared at the T’gol.
She wore supple leathers as she always had, and her gold eyes were just as piercing. However, her black hair was longer than he remembered, frosted by a streak of white that started at the peak of her brow. Though her bearing was as proud as always, there was a weight to her shoulders and a shadow on her expression he had never seen before.
“You look tired,” he said.
She nodded. “We have journeyed far to get here.”
It wasn’t until she spoke those words that he realized she held a child in her arms: a girl with dark hair, clad in an ash gray dress. She seemed too large to be three years old–Travis would have guessed her to be five–but there was no doubting who she was. The resemblance to each of them was plain to see: her sharp cheekbones, his high forehead. Travis looked at Beltan. The blond man’s eyes were locked on the girl.
“Please set me down, Mother,” the girl said in a voice that was precise and articulate despite a marked lisp.
She slipped from Vani’s arms, padded across the floor, and crouched beside the broken plate. She arranged the pieces, fitting them together with motions that seemed too skilled for such tiny hands.
The girl looked up at Travis. “Make it whole.”
He was too startled to do anything but kneel beside her and place a hand on the broken plate.
“ Eru,” he said, trying to gather all the force of his will into the word.
He heard a chorus of voices echo the word in his mind. Only the chorus became a dissonant chord. The familiar whooshof magic in his ears ceased, and he felt a wrenching sensation deep inside. He lifted his hand. The shards of the plate had fused together into a melted gray blob.
The girl frowned. “It didn’t work right.”
“No, it didn’t.” Travis held a hand to his throbbing head. Both Vani and Beltan glanced at him, her expression curious, his concerned.
The girl moved to Beltan, took one of his big hands, and curled her own hand inside it. “Hello, Father.”
Beltan’s expression transformed into one of wonder, and his hand closed reflexively–gently–around the girl’s. She turned, her eyes on Travis now. They were gray, like her dress, but flecked with gold.
“Hello, Father,” she said again.
Travis couldn’t speak. For so long he had wondered if she was fair‑haired or dark, if she had all her fingers and toes; he had tried to picture what she would look like, the image in his mind changing a little with each passing month. Now she was here, so much like he had imagined, and utterly different, and he had no idea what to say to her.
Beltan knelt, laid a hand on her shoulder, and gave her a solemn look. “What is your name, child?”
Her look was as serious as his. “My name is Nim.”
Again the voices spoke in Travis’s mind, echoing the name. Only it wasn’t just a name, it was a rune.
“ Nim,” Travis murmured. “Hope.” He moved toward Vani. “Did you name her that?”
The girl–Nim–laughed, all traces of seriousness gone. “Don’t be silly, Father,” she said. “You did.”
“I told her she was my greatest hope,” the T’golsaid to Travis, “and that it was you who told me the ancient word for hope was Nim.”
Travis tried to clear the lump from his throat. “You spoke about me–about us–often?”
Vani nodded. “As soon as she could speak–which was quite early–she always wanted to know everything I could tell her about you both. She can be quite . . . persistent.”