I woke to a golden glow of light with the scents of mint and lavender hanging thick in the air around me. A babble of voices filled my ears and I frowned in confusion.
Something niggled at the back of my mind. I shouldn't be sleeping. It was far too bright out for that. And something more. There had been an argument, something about danger. Was the argument still ongoing? If so, why had I fallen asleep in the middle of it?
Sitting up, I groaned at the way my head hurt. The light was bright enough that I could only squint.
"Quiet!" A voice barked out the command, making me freeze in place. The voice was familiar. Coult in a temper again? No. There was urgency in that tone but no anger. And it was Blaide, not Coult.
I peered blearily around, sensing movement more than seeing or hearing it. My head was pounding so that I couldn't think. A hand settled on my shoulder and I turned to see Blaide gazing down on me, relief marking his whole face.
"Aeri," he exclaimed quietly. "How do you feel, Love?"
"My head hurts," I told him. Even as I spoke the words I attempted to tap my wellspring of power. It was so faint and weak that I quickly abandoned the effort. "What happened?"
Blaide gave me a sharp look.
"I told you she would be well enough," another voice sniffed before Blaide could explain. "A little confused, but that will pass."
I looked in the direction of the speaker when he began to talk, unable to place his voice. It was Hanani, Coult's father. He knelt on the floor, but it was clear that only Coult's dagger at his throat had anything to do with the posture. Even with his very life being threatened it was obvious that the older man would not deign to show anything other than his accustomed haughtiness.
"Shut up, you," Coult growled, jerking his blade closer to his father's throat.
His gaze met mine and I flinched unwillingly at the anger that shone there.
Hanani subsided and I closed my eyes, as much to avoid Coult's glare as I did in relief as Blaide's healing light sluiced over me, easing the pounding at my temples and making it easier to breathe deeply.
"What happened?" I asked again, my voice only a whisper.
There was a hesitation throughout the room and then Blaide touched me gently on the forehead, his hand moving to caress my face. "Aeri, you died."
"Oh," I said faintly, as the room seemed to spin.
"We need to leave," Coult's voice cut through the fog that I would have more than happy to succumb to. "Now. Can we manage?"
I struggled to get my eyes back open, murmuring, "I can manage."
Coult made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cross between a snort and a curse. "Blaide, carry her," he commanded.
I felt myself being lifted and wondered if I was as light to Blaide as I thought I must be. My own body seemed insubstantial.
Danger seemed to crackle in the air so I opened my eyes and watched languidly from Blaide's arms. A woman walked into view, her face grim and looking vaguely as if she would protest. She advanced on Coult, pulling a knife from her belt as she approached. At the sight, I began to struggle rather weakly against Blaide's hold on me, my ability to scream the words of warning snatched away from me through sheer terror.
Blaide only held me tighter, as though he could not see the danger that threatened Coult. I continued in my weak struggles, gasping, until the woman stepped up beside Coult and slowly moved to hold her own dagger against Hanani's throat.
Calming only slightly, I at last recognized who she was – the same woman who had put Coult into his strange coma. This was enough to set off a round of hysteria and without realizing it, I began to cry in terror.
Speaking between gritted teeth, Coult looked up at me as he backed away from his father and the woman. "Get her out."
Blaide turned in obedience and I twisted wildly in his arms, craning my neck to keep Coult within my sight. He faced the pair as Blaide carried me through a doorway. "I expect to never see either of you ever again," Coult growled. "Ever."
And then he was striding away, his face remote as though concentrating very hard on some difficult question. It set his face in familiar lines of sternness. I sagged in relief as he put distance between the pair and himself.
In a moment, Blaide was stepping outside with me in his arms, Coult right on our heels. Wasting no time, Coult strode past us, moving quickly. He threw himself into his saddle and then held out his arms. Blaide passed me up with some mild trouble and then was out of my line of sight, presumably to mount his own horse.
Dazed at how quickly things were moving, I was first bemused at finding myself cradled in Coult's arms. He looked down at me gravely, his long hair loose and failing forward. Without thinking, I reached up a hand to touch it.
"Comfortable?"
I nodded and he made a curt nod back before he turned to look for Blaide. "Let's go. Quickly."
A strange noise filled the air, indescribable in the way it seemed to change and murmur and sing. It was the hiss of a fire and the singing of a choir, the tinkle of bells and the roar of an inferno far distant. It was the wind sighing through the trees and it was the sharp sound of ice breaking.
As we rode away at something very close to a gallop, I could see the ground in front of the cabin glowing like a bed of golden coals.
"They'll be free of me soon," Coult called to Blaide. I could feel the words reverberate in his chest with a rumble.
"My spell should last some minutes," came Blaide's answer.
I understood enough of our need for haste that I wanted to tell them I could ride my own horse. Coult's wouldn't last long at this pace under a double load. But I was so tired that I knew I would never mange to keep my own seat.
A thought occurred to me and I giggled. Somehow, Coult heard the sound and asked, "What is it?" in a sharp voice.
"Being dead takes a lot out of a person," I told him, giggling again. I was probably still laughing to myself as I slipped back into in the realm of the unconscious.
It was the sharp sting of a slap across my face that woke me some time later. I threw my hands up in defense, an incoherent cry on my lips. It hadn't hurt exactly, but the heat of the slap lingered in my cheek.
"Ow," I complained, placing my own hand against it as I sat up.
Coult loomed over me, eyes dark with what looked like barely controlled fury. I swallowed the other complaints I had been about to make and satisfied myself with a hard look in his direction as I began to take stock of things.
I felt much improved and was able to clearly recall the details of our escape from Hanani. Whatever had happened between our arrival there and our departure was still something of a hole in my memory. Had I truly been dead?
A quick glance around as I tried to repress a shiver at that thought showed me that we were stopped, apparently for some time. I had been laid on my cloak next to a small fire and there was a collection of firewood gathered and stacked somewhat haphazardly nearby. The horses – mine and Coult's – were tethered nearby. Of Blaide or his mount I could see no sign.
I opened my mouth to ask about his whereabouts, caught a glimpse of Coult's thunderous face again and clamped my mouth shut. He saw my intent and my change of mind and nodded grimly, looking as though he were about to erupt and had only wanted the excuse of silencing me to go on a true rampage.
Swallowing hard, sighing internally as I wondered what I had done this time to trigger his temper, I looked hastily away. Tears pricked at my eyes and I blinked fiercely.
"How do you feel?" Coult asked a moment later, surprising me. He sounded… civil, if not quite soft.
"Much better," I answered tightly, not looking at him.
"Good," was all Coult said at first, sounding so mild that I turned back to eye him suspiciously. It was a mistake of grand proportions. His look was no less fierce and this time he fixed me with it, as surely as if he were pinning me to a wall. I could not look away, desperately though I wanted to. "So I suppose you can tell me now just what in the name of all the thundering, blazing hells you were thinking pulling that stupid, childish stunt!"
His fury sparked my own and I blazed immediately back at him. "Do you enjoy being cruel to me for the sake of it? You… you ass!"
He roared right over me, hardly seeming to hear my words. "If I am cruel it is only because you are so spoiled and ignorant and heedless of anyone who might know better than you do that you won't bloody listen!"
I scrambled to my feet, looking down on him with my hands fisted on my hips before he rose, unfairly taking my temporary advantage of height from me. We glowered at each other as I shrieked back at him. "I am not a child! And whatever it is I did this time that was so stupid by your lights, I don't even remember. So why don't you quit sulking about it and just tell me how I've fallen short of your perfection this time!"
Eyes snapping dangerous sparks, he took a step closer to me. I almost backed away but then steeled myself. He bent to stick his face in mine, hissing his next words between his teeth. "Sulking am I?" He sneered at me, mouth twisting. "Don't remember, do you? I can see how such a small thing as sticking your neck on the bloody chopping block and having the most dangerous man of my acquaintance kill you on the bare promise of his agreement to teach someone else the spells to resurrect you would be so easily forgotten."
The sentence was so long and so garbled that I could only blink at him. "What?"
Coult moved suddenly, violently. I staggered back in fear of being hit, though he had moved away from me, throwing his hands to the sky and clenching them in fists. He looked dangerous and I was as afraid of him now as I had been when he had backhanded me so many years ago. More so, for he truly looked as though he could do murder.
Whirling away from me, he turned to the nearest pine tree and hit it twice. The sound of anger and frustration he made was nothing I could put words to and then he rounded back on me, seemingly unaware of his scraped and bleeding hands.
I hoped to hell they hurt.
"You," he said, biting off the words and advancing on me with menacing slowness. "You asked Hanani to kill you. You put your life in the hands of an untrustworthy monster. You ignored me, ignored Blaide, ignored everything but what you wanted."
I was backing away from him, my heart pounding so madly that it seemed a staccato counterpoint to his measured words.
"You let him kill you, you stupid child. Because he promised to teach someone the spells to bring you back from the dead."
At his calling me a stupid child again, something in me snapped. We were not very far apart and I swiftly closed the distance, kicking Coult in the shin as hard as I could. I was wearing heavy boots and he bent double to grasp at his leg.
"I'm not dead now, am I?" I demanded loudly over his string of curses. "So clearly it worked."
He glared murderously at me, starting to straighten back up. He opened his mouth and I slapped him full across the face. "If you hate me so much it's a wonder you didn't just leave me dead. Do me the favor of leaving me in peace."
And then I fled. He did not pursue.
Of the trip back to Stormwind there is very little to say. We avoided all towns and main roads until we reached the sea. If Hanani or his daughter – a relation we had learned of during our encounter with them – pursued us, we never had any sign of it.
A great deal had apparently come out of that confrontation in Hanani's home. I could never remember more than vague details of most of it, but Blaide filled me in during Coult's absences, which were many.
Hanani was a self-styled scholar, but his methods of learning and cultivating magic were warped at best. When he and his first wife had produced Coult and Coult himself had proved to be innately powerful, Hanani had begun to wonder whether he couldn't produce even more powerful offspring through breeding with women who also had magical abilities.
He had left Coult's mother and, though he had remained married to the unfortunate woman, had begun seducing and manipulating other women into his bed. The Lady Anuriel, Coult's half sister, was a product of one such encounter.
Hanani had spent much of his time cultivating Coult's considerable abilities and had eventually revealed too much of his goals with his son – a son who had ever been loyal to his mother and who had been old enough to understand what his father's actions had done to that woman. When his mother died, far too young, emotionally shattered at the betrayals of the man she had loved, Coult had turned against his father.
Hanani's other daughter, the woman we had thought mute, served her father's purposes almost without question. With two of his children turned against him, he had been careful to keep his last one more carefully molded. A half-wild creature who had been raised apart from people by a near madman, Shana had used her own considerable magical skills against Coult, knowing him to be her half brother. It was her hatred of their father's first disappointment that had placed him in that strange coma-like spell. Hanani claimed he had not known of it, but the man spoke mostly lies.
These revelations aside, I had come too far to turn away from the goal I had sought. Blaide told me I argued most ardently against everyone's objections until at last Hanani had agreed with amusement to teach the spell of resurrection. When he had mentioned needing a corpse, Coult and I had argued bitterly over who it should be.
Blaide did not tell me how I won the argument and I did not wish to know what words I had found to fling at Coult to get him to stand aside long enough for me to allow Hanani to kill me.
Hanani had evidently used the opportunity to goad Coult into a fury. It had been an action much to his detriment, according to what Blaide recounted to me later. While I had been lifeless and insensible, Hanani had spoken at length of the power he had sensed in me and had mused upon the possibility of not teaching anyone the spell to bring me back to life. Blaide and Coult would leave eventually and then perhaps he might try for a fourth child.
"He almost seemed to grow taller," Blaide had told me, voice still awed by the power Coult had displayed. "I cannot say all of what happened then, since it was all shadow magic and only knowing the Light, I don't know how it all worked. But he had both Hanani and Shana on their knees in moments and then turning on each other." He shuddered at the retelling and I could not blame him.
Controlling two separate minds at once as well as his own? It was unthinkably powerful. Even if that was not precisely what he had done, to take on and dominate two very powerful foes as quickly as Blaide had said he did was nothing short of miraculous.
I wished I could have seen it. Though I could not help but pale when I realized that he had also managed to bring me back to life while holding a knife at his father's throat and keeping his half sister under his command.
His rage must have been astounding. Given the history he had with his father, I could at least partially understand where that torrent of emotion had come from. More than likely he had also channeled his hatred of me into it.
It was a point I pondered often as we traveled.
Both of my companions now knew the proper incantations, but since it had been Coult who had brought me back to life successfully, it was agreed that he would remain with us long enough for us to return to Lord Halvar's lands and see Cennerun returned to life, if it were possible. He had been in the grave many weeks.
Compared to our trip northward, the journey home was exceedingly dull by comparison. We sailed most of the way, stopping only once to travel a handful of days on shore from one coastal city to another since there were no ships bound for Stormwind for some weeks from the port we had landed in.
During all this time, Coult and I avoided each other assiduously. I rarely saw him, even trapped on the small confines of the same ship. Perhaps he meant to pretend I was dead. Even on the road he ranged either far ahead or behind where Blaide and I traveled together. When we camped for the night, he spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort in finding firewood or anything else that might we need. Anything to keep his distance from me. I did not comment on it to anyone and the one time Blaide tried to raise the topic between us, I firmly refused to allow him to do so.
Weeks later, we at last reached the end of our journey as we rode onto Halvar's lands.
Author's Note: Oh, um, hi there guys. Nothing like half a year to help you forget about a story, right? If it helps, I moved cross-country in that time and am still only temporarily settled and still looking for a job. But with deep and profound thanks from me to Vexating, I was reminded of this at a time when I am actually quite given over to writing like a fiend. And we're very, very near to the end. So I am motivated to finish this up quickly.
To everyone still hanging on, thank you. I'm sorry. And I hope this does not completely disappoint.