Side A – Nia
Nia pinched herself. It hurt. She tried it again. It hurt again. The pain wasn’t the surprising part though. The surprising part was that her hands weren’t on the Shatter Drum that was laying before her. Instead they, and all the other parts of her, seemed to be sitting in front of Osdora and Gossma with no song to manifest her in their presence.
“Uh, what just happened?” she asked, looking from Osdora to Gossma and back again. “Am I really here?”
“I don’t know, keep pinching yourself, maybe that’ll wake you up,” Osdora said.
Gossma hit Osdora in the shoulder, not gently.
“Ignore her, she’s the worst, especially when she’s accidentally manages to do what she was intending to do.” Gossma’s raised fist suggested she was more than willing to “debate” the issue with Osdora if Osdora felt like picking on Nia any further.
“You drew me here through the song? How did you know that was even possible? Is that something you’ve done before?” Nia asked, the implications of the magic they’d performed swirling in her head.
“She guessed and took a wild chance,” Gossma said.
“I did not!” Gossma adopted an outraged expression, but the fact that she was entirely too pleased with herself shone through it easily. “I took a considered chance on a hypothesis I built out of a series of prior and current observations.”
“Huh, you did a good job hiding the wheelbarrow you hauled all the bull in,” Gossma said, but relented and lower her hands after a roll of her eyes.
“I didn’t make a wild guess,” Osdora said, turning to Nia. “I started to wonder if this sort of thing was possible the moment you and Yasgrid started playing. I thought it might be what you were trying to do. I listened as close as I could because I was terrified you were going to mess it up. What you played turned out not to be a physical translocation, but it had a lot of similar themes woven through it.”
“So there are Shatter Drum songs that can move you from one place to another?” Nia asked. It probably wasn’t the time for history and theory lessons in Shatter Drumming but if Osdora was in a chatty mood on the subject, Nia intended to milk the moment for all it was worth.
“Not like you’re thinking,” Gossma said. “It’s possible to setup locations that echo with each other. You can travel between spots like that, but only at certain times.”
“Yeah, it’s usually at the turning of the seasons, or even just the solstices,” Osdora said. “A freestanding transport like we just managed is unique as far as I can remember.”
“You’re forgetting the Song of Bardek,” Gossma said.
“It’s unique outside of legends that are so exaggerated that no one in their right mind takes them seriously,” Osdora corrected herself.
Gossma sighed.
“She always kept her hands on the drums too much to have her nose in a book.” She sent Osdora a look daring Osdora to correct her. “She manages to perform a legendary song and she thinks the legends are all make believe.”
“Oh, I didn’t perform a legendary song,” Osdora said. “Not by myself. And speaking of which, you should probably get your hands back on that drum before you give your lady a legendary heart attack.”
In the distance, the drumming Nia had heard was slamming down with all the force a single, wonderful drummer could muster.
Side B – Yasgrid
Leaving the Fate Dancer’s camp proved easier and less violent than Yasgrid had imagined it might. It wasn’t that Fate Dancer’s didn’t appear along her path in ever greater numbers as she approached the gate. It wasn’t that the sight of Endings in her hand held them at bay. They routinely fought terrors from the deepest depths of Elven souls. What stayed their wrath was the woman who walked with Yasgrid.
“If you don’t return, we will hunt you,” Kyra’s mother said,
“If I don’t return, there won’t be anything left of me to find,” Yasgrid said.
No other promises needed to be made. The older woman understood Yasgrid perfectly well and, in some forbidden way, trusted her.
Outside the gate, Yasgrid found Marianne and Kayelle waiting for her.
They were sitting a few dozen yards away, across from each other with an old stump in between them. Cards were stacked in neat piles on the stump, but the two turned from their game at Yasgrid’s approach.
“Apologies for taking this without warning,” Yasgrid said and handed Endings back to Kayelle. It was a token gesture. Either could call it to their hand at will. Given that Elshira hadn’t shared Endings with anyone though, Yasgrid wasn’t sure if the capabilities of two Bearers was something she would know.
“It doesn’t seem like you needed to use it?” Kayelle asked.
“I didn’t and I won’t,” Yasgrid said. She wasn’t answering Kayelle’s question. Not really.
While it might have been her imagination, the prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck gave Yasgrid the profound sense that she had a far more malevolent audience watching over her than the Fate Dancers who had crowded onto the walls to see where she was going.
“Renouncing your vow?” Marianne asked and from the narrowing of her eyes, Yasgrid guessed she could feel the scrying effect as well.
“Expanding it,” Yasgrid said.
Endings perked up at that, and Yasgrid explained herself to it silently. Of all the conversations she might have, speaking to Endings was the one she was the most certain Elshira couldn’t listen in on.
“Where are we traveling then?” Kayelle asked.
“We’re not,” Yasgrid said. “Where I’m going, I need to go alone.”
Both Marianne and Kayelle narrowed their eyes in disapproval at the notion, but Yasgrid met their gazes and willed them to understand what she was really saying.
“You know we can’t let you do that,” Marianne said, but her eyes spoke a different message. She understood that they were playing for Elshira’s benefit.
“If there’s Trouble to face, I’m the one sworn to end it,” Kayelle said.
“Which is why I need you to stay here,” Yasgrid said. “And why you need to keep Endings. You’re doing the work the gods intended. You need the tool they left us for that purpose. And it’s work that has to be done. If you can’t end the Troubles that will be marshaled against us next, then nothing I do is going to matter. And if I fail, but you succeed, then I still win in a sense.”
Yasgrid hoped that sounded convincing. She hoped it sounded like the argument Elshira would expect her to make. Most of all though, she hoped Marianne and Kayelle understood what she was really saying.
Help me! But do it without being noticed. If we’re going to win, she can’t have any warning and she can’t see it coming.