"In short," Aithal said as they walked back through the public parts of the library, "our hope lies in the hands of our enemies, and we must travel to the very Colorless Land we are trying to run from."
He said it in a tone that was almost lighthearted. "Suicide mission indeed," he laughed. "Many times have we ventured them before and escaped by the skin of our teeth. What of this one, I wonder?"
Saryana gave him a lopsided smile, though her body was tense. "You're glad, aren't you?"
"Glad? Well, maybe; glad that it is not anywhere else, further away from all our hopes." Saryana gave him a look, and Aithal sobered up. "But yes, I am glad," he said. "Glad I still have a chance to go there and continue my mission."
"We, you mean," she corrected him.
"If you'll still have me, after all the nonsense I have led you into."
They exchanged a glance that lay somewhere between fondness and mischief, the kind Jolette sometimes caught her parents doing when they were teasing each other. Then Aithal's eyes fell on one of the bookshelves, and his expression darkened.
"Book-keeper," he said, striding ahead, "have there been any news from Elodia lately?"
The old man's face darkened. "Nothing good."
Aithal swallowed. His entire body grew tense and rigid. "Tell me."
"The royal family is still missing," said the book-keeper. "Several of the nobles have formed factions to fight for the throne. They are gathering allies and soldiers. No one knows how much longer the royal guard will be able to hold the palace from the rival factions."
Aithal's face blanked. His jaw tightened.
"In short," said the book-keeper, "the country is on the brink of a civil war."
"Thank you," Aithal muttered and brushed past him in haste.
~ ~ ~
They did not gather at one of the dinner-tables downstairs at the inn. They sat together in Aithal and Saryana's room, crowded and anxious.
"So this is it," Aithal said, trying to smile and failing. "My selfishness is finally coming back to bite me, I suppose."
Saryana frowned in sympathy. "Are you planning to reveal yourself?"
"I don't know," he said bitterly, despair seeping into his voice, an emotion Jolette had never seen from him before. "All I know is that I must go there. And I must also search for the dragons in the Colorless Land, and I do not know which one is more urgent."
"You're a prince," said Zamrod.
"Yes, and brought here for this very purpose, separated from my family and my country in case this very situation occurred." Aithal barked a laugh, but there was no mirth in it. "And yet revealing myself would mean giving my family up for dead. Once I have revealed myself, I can never go back to being the hidden backup prince again. I must hold the throne."
"You've never even met them," Jolette snapped. "How can you say they're family?"
Aithal gave her a look, his usually warm green eyes flashing like cold stones. "They are my blood," he said. "I must at least meet them."
Jolette was quiet. She still didn't understand. Her father was also out there somewhere, but she had never met him. She had never thought of him as family. She had no desire to meet him either. Why would she want to meet someone who had abandoned her from the beginning?
"Besides," Aithal continued, "someone needs to take the pendants to the dragons, or accompany those who do. Who will do it, if not I?"
"I'll do it," Jolette declared at once. "Alone if I have to."
Saryana narrowed her eyes dangerously. "You," she said, "are a child."
"I'm not the same person that set out from Rivertown." Jolette hoped her body and voice showed more confidence than she was feeling on the inside. "I've learned a lot. I won't mess up like I did back then."
Or maybe, said a voice in her mind, she just wanted to prove herself. Show the world that she wasn't only a tag-along, that she could do more than rely on adults to solve all her problems.
"You're still too young to go alone," Saryana insisted. "You're thirteen years old, and this is the Colorless Land. You have no idea what's awaiting you there."
"The dragons," Jolette answered. "And my whole village."
"The villagers could be dead!"
Jolette flinched. A flash of blue flickered before her eyes again, bright and intense and inviting, its intensity matching the darkness of her sudden panic.
With a helpless glance, Saryana turned to Aithal, who placed a hand on her arm. "They could also be alive," he said. "We should never give up hope." Something gave Jolette the impression that he was talking to himself as well as her. "But whichever it is," he added after a moment's pause, "no one person can hope to save a village. Not alone."
Jolette set her jaw. What about a family? she wanted to ask. She didn't. She felt guilty. Besides, even if she got her parents back, what about her friends? What about the rest of the village? Either she saved all of them somehow, or life would never be the same again.
"Besides, the land is freezing cold and merciless. And so are its people." Aithal shuddered. "I went there once, years ago, as part of a delegation. Even I would not dare to face it unless I absolutely had to."
"I'm used to cold winters—"
"This is different. This is freezing. This is a wasteland that is only waiting to kill you with cold and starvation."
"Not if I go with you."
Jolette spun around. Edmian's hand had closed around her own, squeezing it, his pale palms and fingers feeling warmer than usual.
"I know the land," he said. "I managed there before. I can guide you."
Jolette swallowed. She couldn't hold his gaze. Too obvious was it that he was forcing himself. He was trying not to show it, but she could see the fear, the mind-numbing horror at the thought of returning to the very place he had been so desperate to escape from.
"No," she said.
His grip tightened. He was stronger than she remembered. "Why not?"
"They're hunting you." Jolette dropped her gaze to the ground. "You ran away from that place. You wanted to get out of there for good. I can't take you back there!"
"If you go, I go."
Almost. Almost Jolette wanted to call it off. Go back on her words, refuse to go anywhere near the Colorless Land, just for Edmian's sake. She couldn't do this to him. She didn't have the heart.
But the dragons. But her family. Her village.
"No," she said again, more firmly this time.
"No all right," Saryana added, "to either of you going. This is something for an adult."
"I'll do it then!" Evariel burst out.
"And I," said Zamrod. Evariel turned to look at him in surprise. He gave an annoyed huff. "Not my style to leave work halfway done."
Jolette clenched her teeth. Control slipped from her grasp again. If it went on like this she would be stuck on the sidelines again, watching, never able to do anything that truly mattered.
Maybe, mused the more reasonable part of her mind, she could help Aithal somehow, stay with him in Elodia and support him there. Though she didn't know how. She knew nothing about royal courts and foreign countries. She was only a villager.
Or she could find a way to do it after all. No matter what they all said.
"Whatever we do," Aithal interrupted her thoughts, "we can delay that decision by some time. Our safest way towards the Colorless Land will lead us through Elodia."
~ ~ ~
The next morning they were already at the havens, ready to board the ship that would take them to Emgar, capital of Elodia. Jadirian ships, Aithal had explained, were the fastest and safest on today's oceans. There would be no faster or easier way to get north in time.
Jolette and Edmian stood with their mouths agape. Neither of them had ever seen a ship this size up close. The thought that soon they would be traveling on one of them, crossing the oceans at a speed beyond all other ways of travel, was both breathtaking and terrifying. Evariel, too, looked excited, though he tried to downplay it when someone caught him.
Saryana, meanwhile, seemed anything but happy. "Don't mind me," she said when the rest of the company noticed. "I've never liked ships. Always scared they're going to sink with me on one of them."
Finally they climbed on board and the ship slid out of the havens, slowly at first, then quickly picking up speed. The wind was on their side. Soon they were rushing over the open seas, anxiously holding onto the railing for fear of being blown overboard.
"Fast, aren't we?" Aithal remarked as he casually strode over the deck, seemingly noticing neither the wind nor the waves. "There is a warm stream going from the Bay of Jadiria all the way to the north coasts of Elodia. All we need to do is let it carry us."
Their journey was uneventful. The first handful of days they were all getting used to living aboard a ship, though Jadirian ships were larger and much less prone to rocking than average ones, and soon they could walk around without losing balance. Jolette first spent many hours clinging to the railing, watching the distant coast pass them by, but she could still not be alone with her thoughts for too long. It wasn't like she could see anything of Elodia beyond its distant shape from here, anyway.
After two days, however, Evariel called them all over, pointing excitedly towards the coast and the bluish hint of mountains rising on the horizon. "Look!" he exclaimed. "Do you see the city carved into the rock?"
The others squinted, but had no idea what he was talking about. He made a face. "Right, mortal eyes," he said. "That's the city of the South-Elves you're looking at! Good old Carmenis." He draped himself over the railing. "I have an aunt there! I was named after her, but I haven't seen her in awhile. She hates the family gatherings."
Jolette nodded along with what he said, then she stopped in her tracks. "Wait," she said. "I thought Evariel was a boys' name?"
Evariel turned around to stare at her with such utter confusion that she wondered if the question she had asked was very stupid. Aithal gave a laugh. "The name Evariel is gender-neutral," he explained. "The ending -el only means one, referring to a person. Evariel means bright one."
Jolette was still confused. "But they named their son after his aunt?"
Evariel looked slightly uncomfortable. Once again Aithal jumped in. "Elves have a magic that adjusts the body to match the gender they identify as," he said. "So many elves give their children gender-neutral names at birth, to spare them the hassle of a name change later."
"Huh," said Jolette, pondering the words.
"You said that like it was unusual," Evariel remarked. "What do you mortals do when the body you were born with doesn't match your gender?"
The others shrugged. "Clothes," Saryana suggested. "Makeup."
"That's horrifying!"
Aithal laughed. "See it like this: most of us are long dead in the time it takes elves to even begin figuring out their gender."
The elf shrugged. Aithal continued. "However," he said to Jolette, Saryana and Edmian, "the change works very fast for elvish standards, years instead of decades. Their bodies are unused to it and it can cause extreme growing pains."
Jolette gave Evariel a long, questioning look.
"What about you?" she asked. "Have you done a change like that?"
Evariel gave her the forced grin of someone who had been through a trying experience and would rather not talk about it.
~ ~ ~
They arrived at Emgar at night. From a distance Jolette had seen the city gleaming in the light of the setting sun, built upon a high-rising island a mile from the coast, tall buildings and slender towers rising up into the sky. But by the time they pulled into the havens it was dark, the sky clouded, their hair and clothes tugged and pulled by a sharp westerly wind.
"Disguise yourselves well," Aithal told them before they left the ship. He had put his travel-cloak on again, his hood low in his face, obscuring his features. "We do not know what awaits us here yet. Let's find a place to sleep for tonight." He lifted his head to gaze up at the city, reaching for the moon and the starry sky from the gathering mists of the sea.
"And tomorrow," he muttered, "we will see what needs to be seen."
~ ~ ~
Elisya opened her eyes in a familiar white space.
All the journeys here, and they never became less painful. She never liked to use these ways unless she absolutely had to, but this had been necessary. If she had not used this opportunity, she would never have found a better one in time, for everyone involved.
"You really should stop doing that," said a voice from a few feet away.
Shifting, she sat up, following the sound to its origin, to a figure and face she knew better than her own. "Maethya, dear," she said, mustering a smile. "How lovely of you to always wait for your sister."
Her twin spirit frowned. She still looked the same as the last time, and the time before, and before that. Her face and dark eyes were the same as Elisya's; but her hair was still black, her features as youthful as they had been the day she had chosen to leave the circles of the world.
"Stop joking," she said. "Temporarily disappearing with no one knowing where you went, that is one thing. But you never went as far as to fake your own death before!"
"Desperate times, desperate measures." Elisya pushed herself up. "My own power is not enough, I could see that. I need assistance."
"We have stopped interfering." Maethya's gaze turned almost accusing. "All of us except you."
"And yet the world still needs us."
"They never cared what we did. You know that."
"And still," Elisya replied, "there are women in the world who are named after you."
Maethya flinched. For a moment the face of a young woman flashed through Elisya's head, one she had kept in her memory because her name was the Firlandic form of her sister's.
"You keep trying and trying," Maethya changed the topic. "They never listen. Not a single one has ever lent you their aid."
"Counsel might be enough."
"Elisya—"
"But I will ask you anyway," Elisya continued, taking her sister's hands. "Will you not join me, or at least let me borrow your power?"
For a long, quiet moment, Maethya seemed to hesitate. Her eyes were wide and anxious. Then she pulled away, averted her gaze.
"I left the world for a reason," she said. "I will not return."
Elisya swallowed. For a moment she felt like she was back on the day her sister had decided to leave her side.
"As you please," she said bitterly, passing her by. "Then I will ask the others."
"You have tried before. They never listen. Not a single one of them."
"Oh," said Elisya, "but I have never asked every single one." She glanced back over her shoulder. "Maybe this time I should."
Maethya paled.
"You can't."
"It breaks no rules," Elisya replied. "Does it?"
For several heartbeats Maethya made no response. Then she frowned, looking suspicious, almost terrified.
"What," she asked, "are you playing at?"
Elisya smiled like a snake.