He remembered all too clearly that when Magiere had opened the orb of Water, he, she, and Leesil had each sensed or seen something different.
He had felt the presence of a Fay, a singular one.
Magiere had sensed an overwhelming undead.
Leesil had seen the head of a great serpent ... or dragon.
“What are you going to do?” Wynn whispered.
Chap believed one of his kin was inside this orb and perhaps each one of them. Of the Enemy’s minions they had encountered, most had been especially obsessed with the orb of Spirit. So it was the logical orb to try.
Lifting a forepaw, he reached over the chest’s side and never hesitated as he touched the object’s strange smooth but faintly rough surface.
The tent, the chest, and Wynn vanished.
A world—and his life—rushed by, all tangled and obscured in a mist like gray clouds trying to envelop him. In flickers of what he could make out, he thought he saw his own life played out in glimpses, but always moving backward ... always growing darker ... until he saw nothing.
A hiss grew in the dark over a scratching on stone so loud and harsh that he then heard crackling, as if the stone broke. A reddish light grew somewhere ahead. For a moment he thought it was flame, though its shape changed to the maw and then the eyes—and then both—of some immense reptile without limbs. But it was not a snake, not even a serpent, judging by those armored scales on its coils.
Was it like what Leesil had claimed to see when Magiere opened the first orb?
Chap could not remember this placeless, timeless moment. As before in the white mist, this time in the black mist, like broken clouds of swirling soot, he saw something ...
Bodies in strange clothing or armor gathered like ghosts. Their faces and limbs and any other exposed flesh were pale as death. A whisper carried in more than one voice, over and over.
... Beloved ...
Hovering in flickering glimpses behind each figure was the red-haloed shape of that black-scaled dragon. He recognized two of the pale faces.
The first had almond-shaped eyes in a narrow face draped with tangles of silken black hair. Though her irises had been crystalline then, in this vision they were so dark, they might be chocolate, nearly black.
Li’kän had been the mad and near-mute guardian of the first orb, and Chap recognized the other.
Likewise, Qahhar, with his thick eyebrows and shiny, dark locks, looked as Suman as Ghassan. But he was as pale as all the others—thirteen in all.
These were the Children from the poem scroll Chane had brought to Wynn, but Chap never had a chance to see the other faces clearly. They crumpled into the black mists as if dying upon the whisper of ... Beloved.
He saw again the fiery maw and eyes of the dragon, suddenly smothered to nothing.
In their place came flickers of his own life, his own existence, but again moving backward in time.
Magiere and Leesil discovering the secret that he was Fay.
Living on the road with Leesil after the young half-breed fled the Warlands.
Eillean, Leesil’s grandmother, bringing him as a pup to Cuir’en’neina, Leesil’s mother.
Being born and then ... nothing ... but more whispers that he now felt more than heard.
Nothing ... no more ... nothing ...
Let there be something ... some ... thing ... for us ...
He felt himself without body, without mind, without anything but thoughts. The overlapping chorus of whispers was so mournful, like ancient, timeless children mourning in the dark.
A chorus of voices whispered in Chap’s spirit, like when he had viciously turned on his own kin when last communing with them. Now it was as if he had gone back even further to that time without time when he had existed as one with them.
I—we—must exist.
He felt them—himself, both, one—though no longer with flesh or presence. He felt five pieces of them—of himself—being torn out, though they went willingly for the sake of all ... of the one.
We will make our existence.
Then there were the many within the one.
He remembered the beginning of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit—the first of any thing. Five parts of the Fay—of him and all that was One—sacrificed themselves in separateness. This ended the Fay’s nonbeing amid an endless, timeless nothing. There was a place and a time for it—they—to be.
Upheaval quickly followed. He could not remember its cause, what it was, where it started ... who was its source. Then he was alone, barely aware of his self.
Nothing more came to him, and what followed began with a mournful loneliness in isolation. No, that was not from him but from some other, though he felt it now. Was that from all of them or from only another one?
It built quickly, making him frantic, then panicked, and finally it became a desperate fury to escape at any cost ... from what?
He thought he heard distant screaming.
And that one of fright and fury died, he could feel it—but it was still there, aware even after its own death. That face of the dragon shaped in fire winked away, but he could still hear its hiss ... and the sound of scraping scales on immense coils exploded in another scream.
“Chap ... please ... breathe!”
He knew this voice, or he should. Not the fiery one that had died and not died. It was another being, but he could not find the name for it.
“Wake up, Chap, please!”
Was someone speaking to him? Was that his name?
“Don’t you leave me, don’t you dare ... Magiere, get in here!”
He should know a name for that voice. Then came something else that he heard: a rustle, perhaps canvas, and rapid vibrations against his side, his body. Did he have a flesh and form? Footfalls brought another voice.
“Wynn, what’s wrong?”
“Magiere, he won’t move, won’t breathe. His eyes are open but ... he isn’t breathing.”
A hard touch on him pressed and shook him. He had a body, but it was only a shell. He could not move it or escape from it.
“Chap, answer me—now,” snarled the second voice. “Wynn, what happened?”
“He touched an orb, only for an instant, and ... and then he dropped.”
“Move aside,” a third, deeper voice ordered.
“Brot’an, there’s no ... What are you doing? Why’d you bring him?”
“Move now,” that third voice repeated, cold and sharp. “Wynn, back away.”
Chap—if that was his own name—felt someone touch him again, perhaps on a shoulder. The following whisper was so close that it blocked all other sounds.
“Time to come back, old guardian. You are not done yet, as a guess.”
Warmth spread from the touch.
A light grew in the complete darkness until a soft glimmer took shape. He vaguely knew the form from somewhere as its glow coalesced into squiggly lines, which became branches, all of which sprouted from a thickening trunk. It was tawny and warm to the sight, and he had seen it somewhere before.
“A bit longer,” that last, fourth voice added, tainted with puzzling humor. “At least, from what Chârmun tells me.”
He knew that name was for what he saw in the dark. His panicked fury fled from its light. Other shapes began to form in his darkness and as a tree slowly faded from sight. With them came smells thickened inside a dim tent. The only true light now was a cold-lamp crystal lying near his head, between him ... and Wynn.