She had almost finished the climb when she heard something unexpected. Joslyn paused mid-stride. Her ears had to be mistaken. She kept walking.
But then she heard it again, and it was distinct this time. She stopped once more so that her own footfalls wouldn’t interfere with the sound, and she unfurled her sense of hearing, pushing it to its outermost range.
Yes, there it was again. From somewhere far away came the rhythmic, metallic bong-bong, bong-bong of a tower bell, like the kind in Port Lorsin’s palace that only ever rang in celebration or warning.
That didn’t make sense. Small men did not use bells. If they did, she’d never seen them, which meant that she would not have constructed them within her q’isson of Xochitcyan.
What if… what if the repeating baritone of the tower bell was not coming from within her q'isson but from the waking world? After all, she was asleep inside what appeared to be a replica of Port Lorsin’s palace. It would make sense for such a palace to have bells.
Joslyn shook her head. Impossible.
She’d been fighting the deathless king for a decade, fleeing from q’isson to q’isson, struggling to survive inside scenes he had created and scenes she had created, just managing to stay one step ahead of him. And in all that time, the mortal realm had never intruded. There had never been a hint that anything existed outside the Shadowlands.
On the other hand, the entire Kingdom of Persopos was engulfed in shadows, as if placed in a liminal space between the mortal realm and the Shadowlands. Perhaps the border between those two realms here was porous. Yet if that were true, why was this the first time Joslyn had heard a bell?
Because,answered a voice inside her that sounded like her ku-sai’s, you never needed to hear it until now.
Joslyn raced forward at a sprint, ignoring the way her calves burned in protest. If a bell rang to warn of danger – danger not to her, but to the inhabitants of Persopos, then she was right and the king was preoccupied with a threat that had nothing to do with Joslyn. It could be her best opportunity to strike a killing blow. If it rang in celebration, on the other hand, then she and Tasia were in grave danger.
She emerged into the round room at the top of the tower. It was as magnificent here, as a q’isson in the Shadowlands, as it had been in real life. But just like in real life, Joslyn did not have the time to stand and admire the way the floor and walls glittered with inlaid gems, or the way the windows overlooked the breadth of Xochitcyan below, which itself looked as though Father Mezzu himself had carpeted a miniature universe with the rarest of jewels.
Standing at one of these windows, gazing at Joslyn with a soft smile on her face, as though she’d been waiting for her, was Tasia.
Despite Joslyn’s anxious urgency, she felt her heart flutter like a teenager’s, and she stopped in her tracks. “Tasia.”
“Grastinga said you would be here today.” Tasia cocked her head towards the window, listening. “‘When the bell rings,’ she said. And here you are.”
Joslyn’s brow furrowed, and she felt the paranoia earned over a decade of fighting the deathless king bubble to the surface. “Grastinga could not have predicted the bell,” she said. “Grastinga is an aspect of my own mind, a product of my own q’isson. And I am not a seer.”
As though saying her name had conjured her, the wizened small woman materialized beside Tasia. She took Tasia’s hand affectionately in both of her own, like a mother might.
Alarmed by the small woman’s sudden appearance, Joslyn shifted her feet into panther prepares to spring.
“Warrior is talented and clever,” Grastinga said in her gravelly voice. “But forgetful. Shadow arts not difficult for small men. Dreamwalking not difficult for Grastinga.”
“This is the real Grastinga,” Tasia said. “She’s been with me this whole time. All these years that we’ve been apart.”
“Prove that you are really Grastinga,” Joslyn said not relaxing her stance, “and that you are really Tasia, not some trick of the king’s.”
“King,” the small woman spat. Grastinga – if indeed it was really her and not an illusion created by the deathless king – lifted one side of her mouth into a snarl. “Dark Man cannot touch small men. Dark Man arrogant. Ignores small men, thinks small men weak.”
“They are not weak, Joslyn,” Tasia added. “I have learned so much since I have been here – so much! And it’s all been thanks to Grastinga.”
But Joslyn had been fooled too many times by the deathless king, who had taken the guise of everyone she’d ever loved twice over in the decade she’d spent battling him within their dreams.
Tasia’s brow crinkled. “Joslyn?”
She lifted a hand as though to touch Joslyn’s face, despite being out of reach. When Joslyn said nothing in response, Tasia took a tentative step forward.
But Joslyn took a step back. “Stay back. I do not trust you. Either of you. If you are who you say you are, then prove it.”
“Warrior’s time has not been like yours, child,” the small woman said to Tasia gently.
The three of them fell into a triangle of silence, beyond which the bong-bong, bong-bong of the bell still rang.
Joslyn hated this. She hated that she’d longed for Tasia for so many years – she would have given anything to hear Tasia’s laugh, see her teasing smile, feel the touch of Tasia’s fingertips upon her face, her neck, and yet now that Tasia actually stood before her, Joslyn had no sure way of determining that it was truly Tasia and not one more trick of the deathless king.
“Joslyn,” Tasia said again, but there was no question in her voice this time. “I know you. And you don’t have to explain. I know what he’s done these many years, the way he’s tried to poison you against me, because he did it before. Remember? On the mountainside? Look.” She didn’t move closer this time, but held out her palm in Joslyn’s direction, like she was trying to coax a skittish dog her way.
That’s what I am to her,Joslyn thought bitterly. What I’ve always been. Some alleyway cur kicked one time too many, more deserving of her pity than love.
But then a world in miniature appeared on Tasia’s outstretched hand. Joslyn blinked in surprise. Atop Tasia’s palm was the interior of a tent, lit by a lamp in one corner. And lying on a sleeping mat, eyes closed, was Joslyn herself.
“I know you’re awake,”said Tasia’s voice to the miniature Joslyn. “You don’t have to pretend to sleep.”
“What sorcerer’s trick is this?” Joslyn demanded harshly. She glanced around, increasingly sure that the deathless king would materialize any moment. Or perhaps the so-called “Tasia” before her would transform into him, transform into his wizened, wrinkled form, like a skeleton draped with the wrinkled skin of a rotten fruit.
“Don’t you remember?” said Tasia.
The miniature Joslyn upon Tasia’s palm rolled towards the invisible speaker. “I wasn’t pretending,” said Joslyn in miniature. “I never sleep until you do. And even then… sometimes I do not sleep at all.”
“Aren’t you exhausted?”Tasia’s voice asked the miniature Joslyn.
“Stop it,” Joslyn said, speaking over the voices emanating from Tasia’s palm. “Reveal yourself for who you really are, or I swear by Father Mezzu, I will strike you down.”
But Tasia – or the deathless king impersonating Tasia – said nothing. From her palm, the miniature Joslyn said:
“Sometimes I dream of my ku-sai. He tries to tell me something, but I never understand the words. The wind takes his voice, or a storm comes and I cannot hear him, or…”
Silence for a moment.
“Or what?”asked Tasia’s voice.
“Or an undatai slaughters him before my eyes.”
Joslyn remembered that conversation. She’d come back from months of fighting the undatai inside the Shadowlands – she thought it had been months, but it had turned out only to be minutes. And when she returned, she did not trust herself, did not trust Tasia. She’d lost all sense of what was real and what the undatai was forcing her to see. So she’d kept Tasia at a distance, worried she might lash out and hurt the very woman she’d sworn to protect. The woman she’d been slowly falling in love with, despite knowing that love between a Princess of the House of Dorsa and a lowly Terintan soldier was impossible.
The Tasia before her, the Tasia of the present, let the memory play within her palm until the moment of their kiss – the first kiss they’d shared, the kiss that had silenced all Joslyn’s pain and self-doubt. Tasia closed her palm, and the memory disappeared.
“He – or it, or they – the deathless king and the monster within him – will always try to come between us,” Tasia said. “He will always try to convince one of us or both of us that the other is monstrous, as monstrous as he is. And do you know why he is so bent upon dividing us, making us suspect one another? Because together, we are the sword and the shield that will protect the Empire, the sword and shield that will protect the whole of the mortal realm. The deathless king has long known that. So have the small men.” She took another step forward, close enough that her familiar smell filled Joslyn’s nostrils. Sunlight. Tasia always smelled like sunlight to Joslyn, even now, in the small men’s underground city.
Joslyn forced her feet to stay still, even though part of her screamed that she should run Tasia through with her sword before it was too late.
She flinched when Tasia’s hand moved slowly towards her face. But when the back of Tasia’s fingers stroked her cheek, her resistance melted. Joslyn knew that touch, knew that the undatai and the deathless king could never imitate it, regardless of what sorcery they employed.
“Tasia,” Joslyn breathed.
“Yes, my love.”
“It’s truly you?”
“It will always be me, Joslyn. Always.”
Joslyn pulled her into an embrace, then into the kiss she’d been dreaming about for the past ten years. Both their cheeks were wet when they finally broke apart, though whether one of them had begun to cry or both of them had, Joslyn couldn’t say.
Somewhere in the distance, the bell still rang like a metronome. Bong-bong, bong-bong.
“What now?” Joslyn asked.
It was Grastinga who answered. “Now both wake. Now you fulfill destiny.”