in that same dank dark cell. Off to one side stood a bucket and a tray with a loaf of bread. Valara dragged herself closer. The bucket was half full of water. She drank a handful, then another. When her body stopped its shivering, she crawled back to the iron bars of her cell.
Magic roused at her touch. She moved her palms to the walls. Here the magic beat a slower, deeper rhythm. Hush, she told it. Let me read the past, nothing more. Nothing more.
She closed her eyes and focused on her hands. When her breathing had slowed, she narrowed the focus to her palms and then to the point where flesh met stone. The current welled up around her; she felt its electric presence rolling over her skin, rippling through her flesh, between her palms and the air—to the region between body and mind.
Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.
Her breathing slowed, her thoughts stilled to match the barely perceptible rhythm of the stone. Rock and mortar used no words, but human speech had echoed here in days and weeks and decades past. Where am I? she asked.
Sunlight glinted from the faceted granules; a man’s voice echoed one word. Osterling.
Yes. Osterling. The early kings of Fortezzien had built a series of castles along the coastline as watch points. The Erythandran emperors had taken over those castles and turned them into forts, manned by soldiers from the imperial army.
Slowly, the rocks yielded their memories, and the trickle of words had become a flood of human speech. Fragments of conversation. Oaths and curses whose meaning had disappeared into time. Valara sank deeper into the past, to the first settlers. Digging. A castle built by common laborers overseen by mages. A remnant of that castle formed this prison. Slowly the voices faded into silence, and she heard only the gulls crying, the wind sifting through sand, and the distant surf, unimpeded by walls or towers or other works of mankind. She had come to the end, which was the beginning.
She withdrew her hands. So she was in Veraene, not Károví. But still a prisoner, and half a world away from her kingdom. Karasek had left seventeen ships behind—nearly a thousand soldiers. Morennioù had only a small militia for each city. They had forgotten to guard against an enemy from outside.
No, it was not them. I did this. I destroyed my homeland.
She sank to the stone floor. Her eyes were dry of tears. She had foresworn grief to keep her strength in the face of an invasion. But now, in the quiet of this cell, memory recited a relentless litany of faults and errors and grave mistakes.
Five years ago, she had thought nothing of breaking the conventions against exploring magic. Or rather, she had thought a great deal about it. Her life dreams had pressed upon her nights, then her waking world. Eventually, reluctantly, she had to accept that she was Leos Dzavek’s brother in a former life. She had helped him steal Lir’s jewels from the emperor. Later, in yet another life, she had stolen the jewels again, and hidden them in Autrevelye.
It was a matter of curiosity, she told herself, unconnected with her life as a princess in Morennioù, the younger daughter, not even an heir. Then her mother and sister died in that shipwreck. Valara had become the heir. Whatever excuses she had made to herself before were worthless. She had sworn before her father’s council to obey Morennioù’s laws.
And yet, she could not resist the pull of curiosity. So she had poked and prodded at her memories, had explored Autrevelye in flesh and spirit, until her life dreams finally yielded enough clues to help her find the first of Lir’s jewels.
Only one. The oldest of the three, the first to speak as a separate creature after the emperor’s mage had divided the single jewel into three, many centuries ago. It was the emerald, of course. Daya was its name. She remembered reaching for it, her fingers digging into the dirt in some far corner of the magical plane, when a voice startled her. Leos Dzavek, conducting his own search.
Shouts. Her own frightened response. Then Leos striking at her with fist and magic. She had fled, bleeding from a dozen wounds and fevered by her too-swift passage between worlds.
Her own magic healed her wounds, but Valara had spent a terrified month convinced that Dzavek would follow her between worlds, or