Orenda didn’t like the way the dwarven guards eyed her as she and Gareth made their way back through the gate. They were both wearing packs now, full of food, toiletries, and full waterskiens that made her think the journey was going to be longer and more treacherous than Gareth had given her reason to believe.

She was amazed how easily the others had let them go, particularly Bella, who had changed her tune so quickly and with such ferocity that it frightened Orenda. Something about this, about them going alone, made the experience bearable to Gareth. He had stopped his complaining and almost seemed chipper. The change unnerved Orenda.

It was true that he had been mostly kind to her, but it was also true that he was the man who was supposed to take care of her before, who had let her down in a way that she would never recover from, and now she was with him again, alone. She didn’t trust him, and could not be blamed for that. He didn’t seem to be in possession of his full faculties, and even if he had been, he had a reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate, and she had seen him kill before.

Not that she was in a position to judge anyone. She remembered the soldiers in the library, the soldiers on the ship in the harbor. The second one had almost been worse, but in a strange, detached sort of way. That had not been something she had decided, more something that had just happened. She remembered that once she had told Felearn that murder never ‘just happens’, but… perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps she had judged him too harshly. He had been right about circumstances, about moving forward into battle or being shot in the back.

It was easy to tell yourself that it was for the common good, that these were evil people who did evil things because they were, at their core, evil. Until you saw that it was someone you went to school with, who had nearly grieved herself to death for an unrequited love- no… no not even that, but for a life lost. Shelly had only wanted what her parents had wanted for her, a good husband, a good match, with whom to have good children. It wasn’t her fault that Tolith hadn’t loved her any more than it was Orenda’s fault she hadn’t loved Tolith.

Orenda thought Gareth was in love, but… still he was the only adult who seemed to understand her relationship with Toli, though she wished he hadn’t said it in such plain terms. She thought of the letter she had read, the private letter that she had no business reading, and thought that maybe most people spoke in plain terms. Xac had been very upfront with his intentions. He never pretended love. He had called himself pathetic for wanting that companionship, for wanting to settle for an imitation only because he couldn’t have his real love.

She found herself thinking about Xac a lot. Earth elves did sometimes take more than one lover, and Soko’s situation, with one of them being human, would not have been so unusual if Xac had been considered a pleasure slave. There were even tales of elven women who took another elven lover, in the romance novels Orenda used to read when she was young and cared about such things, but one was always secret, always hidden away. If a woman was in love with more than one person at once it was… improper, in high society. It was an affair. It was one of those things that happened, but that you were not supposed to talk about.

That didn’t seem to be what her parents had. From what she could gather, they were all in love, at once, all together. They defended each other, helped each other, until whatever happened with Xac happened. The Djinn was in love with Xac, and Orenda wondered when that had happened. No one had ever mentioned him as part of… whatever her parents had had together.

She was, in her mind, beginning to see them all as one group, altogether, but she knew so little of them. But Gareth knew where Xac was, and after they had the staff, they would travel to him, and she would learn everything. She would pry from him the most intimate details of the parents she would never know.

She was not an earth elf, and it was still so strange to think that her mother was.

But it had been so easy to work earth magic the few times she had tried.

Perhaps it was there, inside of her, and perhaps she would feel it, as Tolith did, if she knew what she was looking for in order to identify it.

“Gareth?” She asked.

“Yes?” he said as he led her out into the open air from the cave and pulled the carpet off his back.

“Are you sure that you’re my only living relative?” She asked.

“What do you mean?”

“My mother, Sokomaur,” Orenda said, “had siblings.”

“Yes,” Gareth said, “She had siblings when she went to the frozen north, but she was an only child when she came back. Life can change your identity like that.”

“What happened?” Orenda asked.

“I don’t know, really. I mean, I do, but I wasn’t there for it. They said to me, ‘Gary, would you like to wander into a snowstorm on the off chance that the holy texts are right and we find a lost sacred Crystal City before we freeze to death?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m good right here,’ as is my want.” He answered.

“But they were right,” Orenda said, “They did find it.”

“They found something,” Gareth argued, “When Ronnie scried me to pick him up he and Soko were alone, she was pregnant, and they were both talking nonsense. That’s when they truly went mad and started that ridiculous notion about killing the Emerald Knight. Rendy, come here, step onto this carpet, I’d like to teach you how to work it. I realize I haven’t.”

Orenda stepped onto the carpet as Gareth sat behind her.

“Can you feel it?” he asked her, “Feel the energy under you? It’s like the heat at the core of the planet. You aren’t actually trying to raise the carpet, you’re casting under it. You get a feel for it. You heat the air below and it raises, and you’ll find that you have to activate certain crystals to change direction- they’re woven all through it. But just go slowly at first and take us up. It’s so easy a child can do it.” He spoke more softly when he continued, “I mean… we did it, as children. It was a common spell for children to learn… it can be fun... there are all sorts of games we played in the air… I actually… I shouldn’t complain. I had a nice childhood, before that terrible day. I had two parents who loved me. God, Rendy, I’m… I’m so sorry that-”

He clung to her legs as Orenda focused the heat under them and they shot so high into the air so quickly that she hit a cloud and began to choke.

“Water vapor!” Gareth screamed as Orenda felt her headache return, felt herself getting nauseated, “Fight through it! It isn’t much! It isn’t like being on the ocean- and we’re falling, well,” He clutched her by the waist as they began to drop; Orenda felt the carpet slip out from under her feet, felt herself in freefall, but their descent slowed, and as they came out of the clouds Gareth sat her back on the carpet.

“You can go into the clouds,” Gareth told her, “When you get better at it, but there are so many reasons not to. The air gets thinner the higher you go, the clouds are made of water, and though they are much less dense than the ocean it can make you ill, especially if you aren’t used to it, but look! You’re doing fine now. You went too high too fast; it’s a common mistake.”

Orenda knew that he was trying to placate her, especially after he had told her that he could manipulate the carpet as a child, and she was an adult who had nearly killed them. But he was right, she was more-or-less situated now, and they were standing in the air without her really having to think too much about it. She was adjusting the crystals in the fabric automatically, heating when they began to drop and stopping when they began to rise.

“Look,” Gareth pointed, “Do you see that sheet of absolute white?”

Orenda followed where he pointed and saw what he was referring to. It was far away, but it looked so strange. There was, exactly as Gareth had said, a patch of pure white against the red stone of the mountain. It looked unnatural, but she couldn’t make out exactly what it was supposed to be. It was only color, stark and contrasted from the natural, like a wound, like exposed bone against injured flesh.

“That’s where we’re going,” Gareth told her.

“That’s the temple?” Orenda asked.

“No,” Gareth shook his head, “That’s BaladAl’Naar, my homeland.”