Chapter Twenty

In the living glow of early twilight the lake shimmered like a plain of sapphire, its placid surface sparkling with hidden wonders. It mastered the vale, naming it and thrusting all other details into insignificance. On the long side, it was nearly half a mile from shore to shore and only a fraction less wide. It was not exactly centered and pushed up close to the cliffs on the far bank from the entrance to Numia.

Bordered by a ring of sand, the lake was floored with the same fine-grained grey instead of the clay and mud that would have been typical for the mountains. Along that border, a handful of children played. I saw Gregory among them. They passed what looked to be a walnut the size of a small apple from hand to hand, tossing it in a complicated pattern so deftly I doubted I could have joined their circle safely.

Nearby, on a wide smooth stone, a man sat watching them. He was far too large. Even sitting, I had to look twice to be sure. Probably all of seven feet standing, he had the build of a shorter, stockier man. He looked like I have always imagined dwarves would look in fantasy stories, sans beard, and blown up out of proportion. He was like a giant dwarf.

The man eyed us all warmly and gave Esme a broad grin. I did not doubt he could have held her above his head like a dumbbell in one hand, or any one of us if he chose. His arms could have been carved out of tree stumps.

Esme flashed him a return smile, appearing surprisingly bright and girlish again, but neither took the greeting farther than that.

"Ajax," Li whispered, his lips distractingly close to my ear.

Then we were close enough to see. The lake was as clear as glass. Clumps of a seaweed-like plant grew sparsely along the bottom, seeming to limit their own population to what would be proper for decoration. I could see small, colorful fish darting among their waving strands, but there hardly appeared to be anything approaching a predator among them. Heavy stones, similar to the one Ajax used as his seat, were scattered in patterns that bordered on the artful but might have been chance, dappling the sand.

All of this was immaterial once I saw the woman. I gasped, and Esme looked at me askance, until remembering my newness to their world. "Fear not, that is her home."

She was absolutely beautiful, as I was beginning to suspect all heavily magical beings are, and floated serenely a few inches above the sand of Numia’s bottom. Her lips were a perfect pink rosebud and flaxen hair billowed along the length of her willowy frame. It was her only covering.

Predictably, now that I thought about it, this was the woman who had visited my dreams. I had already met Esme’s Naiad.

"She spoke to me," I said, "before I woke, just as I was waking up, actually."

Esme frowned. "Why didn’t you mention this before? The Naiad does visit us from time to time, but it is never a small matter when she chooses to impart a message. You pretended not to know who she was."

"I didn't pretend," I objected. "I have strange dreams. It's not like she introduced herself."

Esme seemed to be concentrating very hard on something. "It is rare," she said slowly, "that the Naiad would speak to anyone outside of Numia. I have heard of it, but it has never happened since I became First Daughter."

"Abigail is a very strange girl," Li added helpfully.

I glared at him, to no effect.

Esme pursed her lips. "Can you tell me what her message was? What did the Water Mother have to say to you?"

I shrugged. "It wasn't anything really enlightening. She just talked about my nightmares."

"What did she say?"

I looked at the woman in the water, sleeping by all appearances, and thought over our conversation. Was it my imagination or did she wear the barest of smiles, the hint of one?

"She said I shouldn't fear the shadow. That it's not really dark, because it comes from the light. It didn't make a lot sense to me." Well, it did, if she meant the shadow that lived behind the mirror in my mind, but I wasn't going to stop being afraid of that, whatever the Naiad said. That shadow was somehow a portion of my heritage carried down from my mother's side, and anything that has to do with Malice needs to be feared.

Esme was quiet for a while and began her own study of the sleeping beauty. "If you think nothing of it now," she said, "still do not forget it. She never speaks lightly, and it may be that you were not ready to accept what her words meant."

"I won't forget," I said. I couldn't forget this woman if I never had reason to think of her again. To say that she seemed more than human was silly, because she so obviously was, but I don't know how else to explain the impression the Naiad made on me. It was like meeting a shooting star.

"Can you tell me about her?"

"Gladly."

So we sat before the water, listening to the children at their game as the sun began to set and gazed at the immaculate and unmoving Naiad. The sunlight rolled over her in rippling bands, an orange-spotted fish peeping out of the billows of her golden straw hair. Esme began.

"When the first of my people came to Numia, this age of sightless men had well-nigh matured, but they lacked the weird and wicked wonders they now own. Different people called these lands home then. Though they could not see the Naiad, they could feel her presence. It was through them that my forebears stumbled upon this vale, hidden as it is from men who have no magic in their blood. She had been alone before we came, alone since before this age began. She did not share with us her memories of the far and long, but she made a pact with my people. We keep Numia for her; keep it strong and keep it clear from those in every age who would misuse her. We are her protectors.

In exchange, she changed us from what we were. She gave us a home when we were refugees fleeing a world where magic was dying. She made for us a sanctuary against that failing. Even more, to the one we name First Daughter; she gives some powers as a Wizard has. Though not identical, I can call myself such. To the four named Totem brothers, she gave another power-- gave it back truly. For in the far and long all of our people knew many shapes and wore them with ease, but with magic fading we lost the power of change. None but the Naiad could have returned even a portion to us."

"Is she a god?" I asked. Esme had described her worshipfully, as if that word would apply, but Esme shook her head firmly.

"There are no more who could be rightfully called gods. This age could not sustain them. I cannot say what she is, but she is not that, surely. One day even her strength, her Numia, will go the way of the rest of magic in this sightless world. But that is not for a time yet."

"She was called Inamorata once," Li said quietly, sadly, from his place beside me. "In the Wizard’s Age that some call the Age of Heroes, when the line of Lord fell and was snuffed out."

Esme looked at him like he had sprouted hooves and a horn, dumb-founded.

"In all the years I have known you, Lialanni, you have never said this. How much do you know of our Mother that we do not?"

There was a wry twist to Li's mouth as he responded. "You are her people. It never occurred to me that you would not know more about who she was once. I do not interrogate all those I meet, trying to discover if I know more about their own history than they. I would never have the time to accomplish anything."

Esme’s eyes narrowed into two black slits. "Lialanni never tells half of what he knows, even when he is asked, and less of what he thinks. I suppose that is the way of a Guardian." When she turned back to the Naiad though, her face softened. Anyone’s would.

"Can you tell me more of what she was? No one who has ever treated with us could give what you have. Or will your tongue go no further?" There was a touch of pleading to the former and bitterness to the last.

Li laughed without a sound and squeezed my hand. “I hope you never have as high an opinion of me as Esme does." I resisted the urge to prevent him from letting my hand go. He was only joking, but I still felt an impulse to tell him I could never think anything bad about him or believe he was anything but royal. However, aside from being mortifying, those impulses were unreasonable. If I wasn't careful around him I would make a fool of myself. Just because he was stupid gorgeous and had saved me from the destruction of the ranch didn't signify that we were any more than strangers pushed together by extraordinary circumstances. I just felt like it did.

Esme gave Li a look that said she had a very high opinion of him indeed, and he reigned in his amusement. "I should not tease you," he said. "I apologize. I will try to find another memory.”

That was an odd way to say he would try to remember more, or maybe it was another facet of the oddly formal way of speaking they both slipped into. I put that minor curiosity aside, along with a thriving forest of other questions. Li was tracing spirals in the sand. He had that faraway look in the warm violet of his eyes, as if he could recall the beginning of everything. Esme was contented by his answer, content enough to wait anyway, so I had to do the same. I heard Gregory laugh behind us but didn't take my eyes off Li’s fingers in the sand.

They weren't sigils he was drawing. If they had been, I never could have followed them with my eyes. There was meaning in those symbols for Li, though they were only swirls and dots to me. I guessed they were triggers for his memory. The question was how many years were in the spirals on the sand? How far back could he see?

It was a few minutes before he began to speak. “The Naiad is a Fae, but by itself that tells you little. In the time of Wizards there were a thousand races of Fae, though they all began as something like the sort Milton kept, with an affinity for plants. Many of them became nearly human, so that only someone with the sight could tell that they were not. Others adapted animal forms or mixtures of the two, but only a handful of their countless kinds survive today.

There were crises in those days just as there are now; periods when magic came close to slipping away from the world entirely. There would be culls--whole peoples butchered so that others could subsist on their stolen energies. When trouble comes, the magical world tends to eat itself. It is little different from the way of animals. If too many breed in an area that cannot support them, most or all may die. I believe your Naiad was a victim of this."

"She couldn't have been culled," I said. "She's alive. She's right here."

Esme was more patient than me. She listened and watched the shadows painting over the Naiad’s radiant hair. Sorrow wasn't far from her.

"I believe," Li said, "that your Naiad endured where all the others could not. She was the last and without more power than she could ever wield, there would be no more.”

He stopped, running his hand roughly over the symbols he had traced until every hint that they had been was erased. "The last," he said again, but I felt he was no longer talking about the woman in lake. There was a sharpness in his voice I had not heard before, an old hurt.

"The last was put to sleep, so that there would always be one against the day she was needed. There would always be one."

Esme sensed the same shift I had. She did not look at him, but her dark doe eyes were wide over the water. "You think she will wake? You think she will leave Numia?"

Li snorted, as if the questions were unimportant. "I do not think on what she will do, but I know that all who sleep must wake when the Phoenix sings. The Naiad is one of many."

Once again we had wandered far out of the realm where I knew what we were talking about, but it was at that moment I noticed the children were no longer playing. Their voices had gone silent. A giant shadow fell over our trio; Ajax, standing over us with a saturnine expression on his rectangular face.

“What is it?" Esme rose but still only stood slightly above his waist. "What do you have to say?" If I had been her, I doubt I could have managed to sound so preemptory, but the giant took a step back, his eyebrows drawing together to confer.

"It's Casey," he said. "I can feel him returning."

Sure enough, a wolf’s howl echoed in the vale directly following his words. Two more answered.

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