Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(144)

She doubted she had any questions left to ask after the long walk back with Dahli. Valhan extended one hand to each of them. Together, she and Dahli stepped forward to take hold of them.

Valhan looked at her. “You no longer need to take a deep breath before travelling between worlds, Rielle, but you will have less damage to repair if you do, and avoid staying too long between them.”

She took the hint and inhaled. The Arrival Hall brightened and faded to white.

The now familiar combination of worlds flashed in and out of sight, followed by a stream of unfamiliar ones. Briefly she wondered how he could take them out of his world when so little magic remained within reach, then realised the answer was obvious: he had arrived holding enough to leave again.

So when he came to my world, all those years ago, he must not have had enough left over to escape. I wonder… if someone else, or several others, had entered my world holding as much magic as they could, would they have been able to free him?

“Yes.” His voice was clear but, as before, his mouth did not move. “But none of my followers or allies knew where I was.”

“Not even the friends of the rebel who lured him there,” Dahli added.

Rielle looked at her teacher, noting that his mouth did not move either. Colours and shapes formed around them, and as they resolved into objects she gaped in astonishment.

They stood on a ledge built on the crest of a narrow ridge. Like an enormous vertical curtain frozen in place, the ridge interlocked with others to form a strange, lattice-like mountain range. Except this range was not stone, she realised, but the trunks of huge trees woven together, foliage bursting from the upper edge except where it had been cleared around the arrival place.

Stretched between the living walls were thick, metal cables, and along these supports huge translucent structures were suspended, as if a giant insect had left behind a crystalline cocoon. Seeing movement on the cables she looked closer. People were walking along them, passing through a tiny doorway where the cable penetrated the structure.

Each building could have housed a hundred people or more. The scale of it all made her dizzy even before she looked down, to where the living curtain wall disappeared into a gently swirling mist.

“This is my new palace,” Valhan said.

She could only nod. It was astonishing. Dazzling. Beautiful. It was more like what she’d expect an Angel’s realm to look like.

The thought tempered her wonder, replacing it with discomfort. Had he chosen or made this place because of her? She hoped not. It didn’t seem fair that he could be changed into something he wasn’t by the expectations of others.

“Make the arrangements,” Valhan said. Dahli nodded and moved to the edge. Only then did Rielle give the surface below her feet a closer look. Like the buildings, it was made of a crystalline material. It was covered in a random pattern of grooves. Dahli moved off the edge, floating on an invisible floor towards one of the crystalline buildings. Valhan turned back to her. She found she had recovered her ability to speak.

“It is beautiful. What is it called?”

“Cepher.”

“Did you make it?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“The ancestors of the occupants. I have made many palaces, but it is always more interesting to see what other minds have invented.”

“Have you always lived in palaces? What was your original home world like?”

When he did not reply, she turned to see a slight frown marring his flawless forehead, and her heart skipped. He teaches me to never age and the first thing I do is make him frown. “Oh. I’m sorry if I should not have asked that,” she said quickly.

He met her gaze. “There are no questions you should not ask, Rielle. I was remembering my home world. It is very different to this. I have not been there for some time.”

“Has it changed since you were born?” It was oddly difficult to imagine him as a child, or a baby.

“Parts of it have changed a great deal. Not so much the country I came from.” The frown disappeared. “Let’s see if it is still as I remember it.”

He extended a hand. As she took it, she realised that she had not been gasping for air when she’d arrived. But another thought overtook that one as quickly. It is amazing he can recall his birthplace even after a thousand cycles. Does he remember everything? Can pattern shifting make that possible? Can the mind hold a thousand cycles of memories?

“If you wish to retain a memory, you will,” he told her. “The difficulty is knowing which memories to retain.”

And if I wish to lose one?

“With effort, it is possible. I have never deliberately erased a memory.”

But you could have erased the memory that you had erased one.

“That is always possible. But the sorts of memories you wish to lose are the ones most likely to teach you not to make a mistake twice.”

A gloom surrounded them. Worlds had been flashing in and out of sight, but she had not paid much attention. Now, as Valhan released her hand, a dry heat enveloped her. Dunes of a fine red sand stretched in all directions. Here and there stunted white trees clung to the sand with long, claw-like roots, their huge, leathery leaves like upturned palms begging for water.

A desert? she thought. We were both born in the desert? He was staring into the distance. Following his gaze, she squinted into the dimness.