60
~ TWO YEARS AGO: JOSLYN ~
“Does the spring seem longer than usual to you, my love?” asked Joslyn.
Tasia popped a berry into her mouth. Usually, the small, sweet black clusters of berries grew in the summertime; this year, they’d come early. But maybe that was related to how long the spring had been.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that spring has …”
But now that Joslyn thought about it, she doubted herself. Was this spring any longer than a normal spring? Perhaps she was only imagining it. Perhaps the unprecedented opportunity to spend each afternoon lounging in the sun with her princess had simply made it seem as though this spring was endless.
There was a saying in Terintan, one that didn’t translate into the common tongue but which essentially said that when a member of a rival tribe gifted you an apa-apa, you should not then open the apa-apa’s mouth and seek out signs of illness. Not only was it rude to so openly inspect a gift, it also might anger your rival and provoke them to attack.
Intuition told Joslyn that if she kept probing at the question of this endless spring, she would anger her rival.
But do Ihave a rival? Joslyn wondered, then wondered why she would wonder such a thing.
“Joslyn? Are you all right?”
She’d done it again – she’d been staring off into space, worrying herself over nothing, forgetting to focus on the beautiful woman immediately in front of her.
Joslyn forced a smile. “Of course I am.” She swept out an arm, indicating the gardens, the palace beyond, the pond whose big orange and golden fish swam just beneath the lily pads. “How could I not be? I’m in the gardens of the palace of Port Lorsin with the woman I love on a perfect spring day, sharing a bottle of the finest House Aventia wine and a meal cooked by the chefs of the Emperor himself.”
Tasia smiled at this and leaned her head onto Joslyn’s shoulder, nuzzling her face into Joslyn’s neck for a moment before kissing it. “You deserve all of it. And there’s no one I would rather share this day with.”
“If I seem distant sometimes,” Joslyn said, “it’s only because there are moments when I can hardly comprehend my good fortune. To be here, with the Princess of the House of Dorsa: That’s quite a change for someone like me, a former …”
The word she’d been about to say was suddenly missing. It had fled her mind as immediately as shadows in a room disappeared when the curtains were pulled back and sunlight poured in.
Shadows.
There had been something about shadows.
“A former what?” Tasia inquired, green eyes curious.
“A former …” Joslyn began again, but where the memory should be was only a blank and empty space. “A former …” No, not a blank and empty space; a locked box. And the more she tried to unlock the box, the more addled her mind became, as if she’d consumed much more of the bottle of wine than she had.
Slave.
The box in her mind popped open, and from within it came a flood of memories. The tinkers. Paratheen. Murdering Master Samwin. Fleeing to the mountains of northern Terinto and seeking out a reclusive hermit whom local legend labeled a sword master.
The sword!Joslyn thought. Ku-sai’s sword is the key to defeating him!
“Joslyn?” Tasia said, alarmed.
But her voice came from as though down a long tunnel. No – it was more than that. Tasia’s voice came from inside a dream.
Joslyn opened her eyes.
She lay flat on her back on a large bed. Tasia’s bed, she realized. And the Princess – no, Tasia was not Princess but Empress – lay next to her, eyes fluttering rapidly in her sleep.
Joslyn sat up and glanced around. They were back inside Tasia’s bedchamber in Port Lorsin’s palace.
Except something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Every inch of the room was coated in dust, as though no one had been inside in years. Beyond the bed, on the table that sat beneath the window, two plates were positioned across from one another. Shapeless brown splotches stained each one.
Everything came back to her all at once. Joslyn, Tasia, and Akella had sailed to Persopos to end things, to slay the deathless king with Ku-sai’s rune-marked sword and thereby destroy the undatai within the king once and for all. At first, it seemed as though their quest might succeed; thanks to Akella’s wily savvy, they’d snuck into the gleaming white city upon the mountain undetected and made it nearly to the palace at the city’s zenith before they realized that they were exactly where the deathless king wanted them.
Seven Order of Targhan assassins ambushed them. The fight initially went in their favor, with their rune-marked daggers separating three of the women from the shadows that bolstered them within seconds. But then the other four appeared, an assassin landed a poison dart within Tasia’s neck, and the craven pirate fled for her life. It was either surrender or watch Tasia die before her eyes. Joslyn laid down her dagger and her sword.
Yes, but not Ku-sai’s sword,whispered her memories. You hid that from them – from him – so that you could retrieve it again only at the final moment.
The surviving assassins had bound Joslyn and Tasia, and then they had taken them to the deathless king. He was as withered and frail as he had been in Joslyn’s dreams, yet the assassins worshipped him as some kind of god. The king then presented Joslyn with a choice: Accept death – first witnessing Tasia’s, then experiencing her own – or give their bodies and minds to the undatai that inhabited him.
“You will be majestic,” the frail old man had said. “Majestic and immortal.”
They would become one with him, he explained, keeping their mortal minds and bodies but unifying them with the most powerful shadow that had existed in millennia, the undatai. Together, with Tasia as the king’s new consort and Joslyn at the head of the Order of Targhan, they would reconquer the Empire. Then they would undo the Brotherhood’s thousands year-old treason – they would unite the mortal realm with the Shadowlands.
The choice was no real choice. Death would not protect the Empire, and had Tasia been conscious in that moment, she never would’ve let Joslyn choose mercy over the fate of her people. But the king had not been fully honest about the second option. Joslyn knew full well that the undatai did not yet have the strength to inhabit Joslyn and Tasia.
“The undatai is weak,” Joslyn told the king, “which makes you weak along with it. It cannot take another mortal body.”
“We grow stronger every day,” the king answered. He smiled, and Joslyn supposed it was meant to be the benevolent, gracious smile of a generous ruler, but with skin so thin that it barely covered his skull, the smile, like everything else in this place, was a nightmare. “We are strong enough to enter your dreams. We have proven that, have we not?” He waved a hand, and the throne room disappeared, replaced by the gardens of Port Lorsin’s palace. “And strong enough to weave a dream for you.”
He waved a hand again, and the sun-soaked gardens dissolved back into the dim and dusty throne room.
Joslyn understood. If she chose the second option, they would wait inside a pleasant dream until the undatai regained the power to possess them. How long would that be? Months? Years?
It bought her time. That was all that really mattered. And Joslyn was a dreamwalker.
“What will it be, Mizana?” the king asked. “Will you fulfill the bargain you made with us? Or do you choose death for you and your Empress?”
Joslyn gritted her teeth, already regretting the words she was about to say. But before her, Tasia grew paler by the second.
“I will fulfill the pledge I made before,” Joslyn told the old king. “We will give you our bodies and our minds in exchange for our lives.”
“Oh, good. I was so hoping you would say that, Joslyn, daughter of Salif and A’eshan.” The king grinned like the madman he was and snapped his fingers at one of the Order of Targhan. The woman rushed forward, produced a vial from within her black cloak, and forced the contents down Tasia’s throat.
Tasia gasped as the paralysis seizing her limbs, the paralysis Joslyn remembered all too well, took its hold upon her. Her glare was directed at the king, but the venom in her voice was reserved for Joslyn.
“Mother Moon, what have you done?”