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  A little earlier, while Yana was busy collecting the perfect stones for her game, Daelis and Shan sat with me. I was on the ground with my head on Daelis's lap, and all three of us were studying the markings on the wall. Nothing about the written language was familiar. The characters were made up of spirals, dots, and triangles. I assumed the words described the pictures I'd interpreted, but for all I knew they were obscene graffiti.

  "Mom... hey, Mom, tell us a story. Tell us about the weirdest merc job you ever did," Shan said. He tapped his fingers on my knee. "You must have had a bunch of them, but you never told me about any of it except that time you worked with the Ragemire orcs."

  "I assume orc would make up the bulk of her weirdest jobs," Daelis said.

  "Actually, no," I replied with a smirk. "The absolute strangest assignment I had was an elf."

  "Half-elf? Perhaps an elf-orc half-blood?"

  I shook my head. "No, no, just an elf. Your race is nowhere near as boring and normal as you seem to think it is. Especially to outsiders. Anyway, Mordegan gave me this job up in Ironwood Forest. I was to apprehend an elf named Gillen Whiteoak, confiscate the goods he was attempting to smuggle, and take the whole lot to the detention compound in Hardbrook.

  "I tracked Whiteoak to a copse at the edge of a cliff. He was standing there meditating into the sunrise with his arms above his head and one leg in there air. I expected someone younger—middle aged or younger like most of my marks—but this guy was elderly. Had to be a hundred forty, hundred fifty years old. Not many years left on his clock, so I was thinking, what's the point of capturing an old elf who's going to die soon anyway? And, why did Mordegan send me instead of giving one of the less-skilled mercs an easy catch?

  "Well, I shouldn't have underestimated him just because of his age. I stepped on a twig, and that old elf backflipped and scooped up a brass telescope faster than I could draw my sword. He leapt at me and started swinging that telescope like it was a war club. I parried most of his blows, but he did manage to crack me in the jaw hard enough to fracture it.

  "'I'm not being taken by some little human girl,' he shouted. He screamed at me like some sort of banshee netherdrake, then spun away and dashed toward a ratty old tent under a walnut tree. Bad choice, Whiteoak. He slipped on a fallen walnut and fell right onto the double-bladed axe he'd left buried in a stump.

  "So, now my mark was dead and I'd still have to haul his body to Hardbrook so I'd get a partial bounty. I didn't know why that one was worth more alive than dead since he wouldn't have lived much longer anyway. I was furious with myself for not taking him alive, and I figured Mordegan wouldn't take the loss of pay well. Now I had to gather all the junk in his possession and pile it in the wagon with the body.

  "I expected his tent would be full of stolen goods, so I was surprised to find it nearly empty. Aside from his bedroll and a couple necessities, all he had in there was a helmet with a huge green egg resting in it. I tossed the contents of the tent in the wagon, grabbed the telescope and axe, and put the helmet on the seat next to me. I made sure my horse ate and drank her fill, then we started back toward Hardbrook.

  "About an hour down the road, I started hearing these noises. Tap, tap, screech! Tap, tap, screech! I thought one of the wagon wheels might be loose, so I stopped. The noise continued, so that wasn't it. Was it a bird in the trees? Sounded too close for that. Crack! The top of the egg blew off with a puff of green smoke. This cute little scaly face stared up at me. That bastard Whiteoak had acquired himself a wyvern egg. And remember, wyverns aren't like dragons. They don't imprint. They are vicious and independent from hatching.

  "So, now I was in the middle of Ironwood Forest, wrestling with an angry baby wyvern. He was just a little guy, so I managed to get him tangled in the tent ropes within a couple minutes. It was another hour to get to Hardbrook, and that furious hatchling screamed the entire time. My ears were ringing by the time I rode through the gates. I arrived half deaf, with an angry wyvern, a dead elf, and a mess of a ratty tent. Probably gave the magistrate and his constables something to laugh about for weeks.

  "The best part of this was that the elf wasn't worth much. Slightly more alive than dead, but still not much. The wyvern was worth nothing and they put it down as soon as the physician found a knife that would penetrate its scales. It was the damned telescope they wanted. The weapon Whiteoak had beaten me and broken my jaw with was a priceless artifact stolen from the astronomy tower at the University of Harmonshore. Whiteoak wasn't even the one who'd stolen it. His grandson stole it and gave it to him as a peace offering in the hope he'd get some sort of inheritance. The grandson was already in custody, and besides, Whiteoak had nothing to leave him. He was wealthy once, but he'd gambled away everything except what I'd found in the tent, and I doubt he had any idea that the telescope was worth something. Let me tell you, though... the bounty for that telescope was worth the broken jaw. It's what allowed me to own a house. Our house, Shan. We didn't have to live with my parents anymore."

  I lowered my hands and smiled. I hadn't thought of that adventure in years. The entire event frustrated me when it happened, but hindsight made it amusing.

  Shan laughed. "Did that really happen?"

  "Yes. You were five years old and your brother was four. Do you remember when we moved into our house? The clerk refused to sell it to me because I was an unmarried woman with two children, and my father ended up having to put his name on it as co-owner even though it was my money that bought it. Damned highborn and their patriarchy." I sat upright and stretched my arms and spine.

  Daelis leaned forward and embraced me from behind. He rested his chin on my shoulder and said, "You're the one who rescued the Harmonshore telescope? I heard about that, but I had no idea it was you. The story was that the mercenary who found it brought it back with a wyvern hatchling in tow, and the hatchling bit seven guards and set a hut on fire. I didn't think it was true."

  "Quite true. The wyvern was a little bastard. You know, that was a well-made telescope, too. Not a dent or a cracked lens despite it being used to bludgeon a little human girl."

  Shan's nose crinkled as he laughed. "You're a good storyteller, Mom. And yes, I do remember the thing with our house. Grandpa was pissed at that clerk, but it turned out okay and we had a home of our own."

  "I've been known to tell stories now and again on my travels. Gives me a few extra coins and some positive respect." I slipped away from Daelis and stood so I could see Yana. "Yana, sweet girl, come back over here. You're getting too far away.”

  Yana returned with pockets full of stones. She set about teaching Shan and Daelis the new game while I took inventory of our supplies and got out my journal.

  It will be time to leave soon, as soon as the game is done and the sutures are snipped. I don't want Yana's game to end, but it must. We need to take a deep breath and step into the next round of shadows. We are not meant to spend the rest of our lives underground. We need to go home and tell a strange story that no one will believe.

  Day 24, part 2

  More walking, more darkness, more hours lost to the void. We've seen the spiral and triangle writing in more locations along the river, but no more paintings. It's always similar. Spirals of unrecognizable words, some written widdershins and some sunwise. I wonder why they reverse the direction of their writing. I've never seen a language written in two different orientations before. Backward, forward, inside-out. Spirals and angles and dots and endless frustration. What does it mean? What does any of this mean?

  We found a stone marker sitting in the middle of the path and stopped to rest by it. The spiral was incomplete. I'm not sure if it was intentional or if the stone was cleaved along the edges and there was something missing from the indecipherable message.

  "Well, I think we're going the right way. Or maybe the wrong way if the writers are malicious." I said. I dropped my rucksack on the ground, then sat down and reclined against it.

  Yana and Shan joined me on the ground, but Daelis remained sta
nding. He lowered his lantern and squinted into the darkness.

  "What's the matter?" Shan asked. His hand ventured toward his sword hilt.

  "I'm going to cover the lights for a moment." Daelis set the lanterns side-by-side. He took off his robe and laid it over them.

  The river path fell into absolute blackness.

  Yana grabbed my arm and whimpered.

  "Um... Daelis?" Shan's voice was shrill and unsettling. "Uncover the lights. Please. Daelis... Dad... please. Now."

  "Wait. Let your eyes adjust, but not too long or your mind will trick you. Look downriver, in the direction we were going before we stopped." Daelis whispered.

  "I don't see anything. Lights. Please."

  "I see it," I said. A faint violet glow sat in the distance. Violet. Now, that was a color I hadn't seen much of down here, and certainly not from anything luminescent. "Violet light. Now put your clothes back on, you fool." My eyes took a moment to acclimate to the return of the lantern light. The violet glow was gone. "How did you notice that?"

  Daelis refastened his robe. "I don't know. I still see it, just barely. Maybe my eyesight or color perception is slightly different from yours. Could be an elven trait, could be just me." He turned toward us and rubbed his eyes. "Any ideas, Rin? About the glow?"

  I squeezed Yana's shoulder and nuzzled her hair. I could feel her elevated pulse through her clothing. She must be afraid of dark. I think I am now, too. "I think we're about to venture into something new. Possibly beautiful, possibly deadly, possibly both. Unlikely to be benign, given our luck. Keep your weapons ready and we need to stay close together."

  "Okay, then. I'm ready, I guess," Shan stood and took a step toward Daelis. "I wish you had more knives."

  "So do I," he replied. "I can't waste a single throw."

  "I'm not ready," I said. I let go of Yana and pulled my journal out of my rucksack. "Give me a couple minutes to write. For all we know, this could be my last entry, so..."

  "So you need to write about the violet." Shan scratches the back of his neck, then sits down. "I get it, Mom. You're compelled to not let our deaths be a total mystery. Gotta tell the anonymous future captives that the weird purple glow is bad. Even though they'll be in the purple glow by the time they find the journal."

  "No, Shan. I write because I've been doing it all along and there is no reason to stop now. You're right, it is a compulsion, but I don't think it's because I'm certain we're going to die. I write to prove that we lived. I write both to remember and to let go. I write because I can't stop, not until this horrible story of ours is over and we're safe at home."

  "Get on with it and write, then."

  So I did, and so I am. My family is becoming restless as they study the stone marker and the strange and distant light. Time to go. Away now, and onward. And outward. Always, always outward.

  Day 25

  Rin fell. She lost her footing on a muddy slope and tumbled down. She hit her head at the bottom and tore open her leg somewhere along the way. I... I was told she'll be all right, but I'm afraid that she won't. The violet Varaku watched our arrival and saw her fall. They carried her back to their village, stopped her bleeding, stitched her back together, and saved her. She's still unconscious, from both the fall and from what the healer gave her to keep her still when they fixed her leg. It's not broken, thankfully.

  Shan and Yana are asleep together on a bed (a real bed! Of sorts... I believe it's actually a mushroom cushion covered in blankets, but it's much better than the rocks we've been sleeping on) in the adjoining room, so now I have some time to write in Rin's journal. I don't think she'll mind. She's a meticulous record keeper and she wouldn't want an opportunity for documentation to go to waste.

  I'm going to sit with her until she wakes, and then I'm going to help her as she recovers. She's stuck with me. I won't abandon her again. I listened to my father when Rin loved me before and I betrayed her. I turned myself into a monster I never intended to become. I was cold and distant, indifferent to the people around me, so much like my father that I loathed myself as much as I loathed him. I detached from the people who used to be my friends and spent all my waking hours working to distract myself from how awful I'd become. Loneliness was my normal state. I put on my mask and pretended to be a person, but I was dead inside. I even agreed to things that would normally make me furious. Not long ago, at my father's insistence, I consented to Lord Lindaer Starbright's proposal that I marry his sister, Lady Linmara. Don't worry about that if you read this, Rin. I didn't marry her. If I hadn't been kidnapped, I would have within a month or two, but instead I ended up here with you.

  Rin, you found the person I was supposed to be and dragged him out of the fog and shadows. I'm not going back to the wasteland of my former self. Even though it will get me disowned and disownment means the Goldtree dominion will end, I'm not going back to my duties at the Citadel. I'm not going back to my hollow house that was never a home. If you'll have me, I'm going home with you. I don't want to spend another day away from you or our children. Abandoning you was the worst mistake of my life and I'm going to spend the rest of my life atoning for it.

  I've made too many mistakes to count, and I'm going to try not to make any more. I was always reckless and self-centered. I hope I'm finally growing out of that. I didn't tell you much about the first woman I fell for, so I'll do it now. Delinda. I met her when I was sixteen. She was a courier for my father, and that ass of a man often used her to ferry notes instead of coming to talk to me himself. I was infatuated with her. Pretty human girl. Long black hair and eyes so dark they were nearly black. I flirted with her relentlessly for nearly a year, and then she reciprocated. It wasn't long before she was pregnant. I was nothing but an imprudent idiot of a seventeen-year-old who never bothered to think about consequences. My father found out about the baby before even I did because Delinda confided in her mother, who went straight to my father and told him everything. That was the end of my relationship with Delinda. My father exiled her and her mother to Uptown. All I heard from her after that was a letter that arrived in the winter of my eighteenth year telling me that I had a daughter named Eilie, that Delinda and the baby were healthy and well, and that I was never to attempt to contact them.

  A couple years later, I fell for Rin. Other than being human and dark-haired, she's nothing like Delinda. Even as a teenager, she was strong, resourceful, and carried a fierceness most people found intimidating. I was far more intrigued than intimidated. She was my friend at first and we spent many nights staying up far too late just talking to each other. I connected with her in a way I'd never felt before. This wasn't infatuation like I felt with Delinda. This was love, and it was mutual. I wanted to marry Rin and have children with her, preferably in that order, but then the fear crept in. By then, it was too late to slink away quietly. Shan already existed. I wanted him and already loved him despite not knowing a thing about him other than he was ours, but I couldn't figure out how to reveal my relationship with Rin to my parents. There was no possible world in which they would allow me to marry a human or acknowledge a half-elf as my heir. I tried to ignore the inevitable future and pretend things would work out no matter what, but the fear clung to my throat and squeezed me tighter and tighter. Rin's belly started to swell as our child grew and thrived, and then I felt Shan kick for the first time. The fear chose that moment to strangle every last breath from me. If I was disowned, I had nothing except a young lover and an illegitimate child, and I couldn't support either. I was twenty-three years old and everything I claimed to own belonged solely to my parents. Stupid. I was so stupid and cruel. I threw away my own soulmate because I couldn't conceive of a world where I was destitute, save the richness that was her.

  I've carried the guilt of that day around me for over seventeen years. I don't regret loving Rin or creating Shan, but I regret what I did to them. I never expected to be granted another chance with them. I still have a long way to go with Shan, since we never had the opportunity for a relationshi
p before this misadventure. I certainly didn't expect to forge a mutual bond with Rin again. We're much different people now, but somehow our hearts still gravitate toward each other. All of this time and experience and hurt, and we've found each other again. She removed my repugnant, festering mask and revealed the real me. My flaws and strengths are on full display and she has decided she loves me in spite of everything I did to her. I'm comfortable with who I am when I'm with her and I've never felt that before. I no longer fear the what-ifs of loving her or the wrath of my father. If we die down here, it will be together, and if we make it to the surface, I am going to be at peace with the consequences of leaving the Goldtree family behind to embrace the Sylleths.

  I'm sitting on a bed next to my Rin now. She's done the same for me twice already—first when I was drugged and thrown in a cave to die, and then again when the Varaku put a hook through my shoulder. She'll be in pain when she wakes and I'll help her through it. I've earned her trust and I'm going to keep it.

  I'm eager for her to wake so she can see the cavern the violet Varaku brought us to. The river we followed empties into an underground lake so wide I can barely see across it. Surrounding the lake is a forest of luminescent violet mushrooms, some of which are taller than the Jadeshire Citadel's highest spire. There are strange sheep-like creatures grazing upon pastures of glowing pink grass. Lights dot the ceiling and illuminate the cavern, but I'm not sure yet if they're natural or something the Varaku made. This place is something out of a surreal dream, and the Varaku who inhabit it are nothing like the barbaric ones we encountered before. I don't think any of them speak our language, but they are kindly and they are trying to make us feel safe and comfortable. We haven't seen many of them, maybe four or five, so I don't know how many live in this village.