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“You have no idea what it meant to me.”
“I think I do,” he said softly.
She smiled a little but shook her head. “When I saw that painting I knew that you are central to solving what is going on. So, I thought that if I told you some of the nature of the trouble, you might be motivated to help me. But . . .”
“But I made you angry instead.”
Jax smiled as she nodded. “When I went back I told people how you so faithfully painted the Shineestay, the place I told you about. People understood, then.”
“Just because I painted a forest that looked similar?”
“No. Because I told them how you painted the exact place, down to the placement of every tree—except the one tree I mentioned that was missing from the scene.”
Alex remembered. He had painted over that particular tree because it didn’t fit the composition. He didn’t say so, though, as he listened to her go on with her story.
“You see, it’s said that long ago the Rahl leader at the time—the one who is said to have separated the worlds—believed that magic involved art, that the creation of new magic in some ways involved the application of artistic principles at the least and maybe even artistic ability.”
“Oh come on. Now you’re telling me that art is magic?”
“No, not at all, but Lord Rahl believed—”
“Who?”
“The man who was the leader at the time of the separation event was a Rahl, the last Rahl we know anything about before the House of Rahl vanished somewhere in history. Back then he was called simply ‘Lord Rahl.’ He fought and won much the same battle of survival that we find ourselves fighting now. The title of Lord Rahl has since come to represent the preservation of magic and individual liberty, to represent for us the very concept of freedom.
“We don’t know a great deal about the time back then, but it is known that Lord Rahl’s victory against all odds ushered in a period of peace and prosperity known as the Golden Age that lasted hundreds of years. This man was its architect. His victory over tyranny and the banishment of those who wanted to eliminate the gift made it all possible.
“For this reason the very concept of the Lord Rahl is hated by Radell Cain and his ilk.
“Anyway, Lord Rahl believed that new forms of magic are acts of creation that necessarily involve elements of artistic visualization. Art—good art—involves principles of balance, flow, placement, and composition, among other things. These elements must be in harmony, each element working with all the others, in order for art to have deep meaning to us, for it to truly touch our souls. So magic and art, he believed, were inescapably linked. When you painted a picture of my world, you were somehow tapping into that elemental concept that he used to bridge worlds, time, and space.”
“Does this mean that you’re not going to try to kill me?” he asked with a smile.
She returned a sleepy smile. “I’m here to protect you, Alex. I need your help if we’re to solve this. Other than finding you and trying to keep both of us alive, I don’t know what to do next. That part is up to you.”
Alex blinked in surprise. “Me? How should I know? These people came here from your world. I’m in the dark about the whole thing. Why would you expect me to know what to do?”
She stared at him as if it should be self-evident. “You’re Alexander Rahl.”
“Jax,” he said at last, looking away from her eyes as he considered how to put his thoughts into words, “I don’t know if you really have the right person.”
“The Law of Nines says you are the right person.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He lifted a hand in a weak gesture. “I think that maybe you’re putting too much faith in me. This Law of Nines business is just superstition. I fell into the prophecy by chance, that’s all. None of it says anything about me as an individual. I’m just a guy who paints pictures for a living. I don’t know about any of this. I don’t know how to fight people from another world.”
“You’ve done all right so far.”
He shrugged off the notion. “I was just trying to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you should put your faith in me. Even if people from the House of Rahl really did come here, exactly as you say, that was an awfully long time ago. I can’t live up to what they could do in your world.” He ran his fingers back through his hair in frustration. “I just don’t think you—”
“Alex, listen to me.” She waited until he looked at her. “There is a mirror in the room where you paint. When I was waiting for the preparations to be made for me to make a longer visit here, I sat for hours at a time watching you paint, wishing I could find a way to warn you through that mirror of all the forces homing in on you.”
Alex had remembered well her advice when he’d first met her that people could watch him through mirrors. He had been careful with mirrors even before that warning. And he had purposely placed that one in his studio, hoping he would be watched—hoping that Jax would see him through that mirror and decide to return. He had placed it there specifically for her.
“I learned a lot watching you through that mirror.”
He smiled a little. “A lot about how to paint, maybe.”
“No. A lot about you. When you watch a person for a long time you come to understand their dedication, their focus, their moods, their emotions—the way they think, or don’t bother to think. You come to learn what’s important to them.
“One day, as you turned to wipe your brush, I saw a picture catch your eye. It was the picture of your grandfather that you kept on the desk beside you. You laid down your brush and picked up that picture and sat staring at it for a time until tears ran down your face.”
“It’s human to grieve,” Alex said. “There’s nothing meaningful about that, nothing special.”
She nodded. “I know. It’s natural to grieve, to be sad, to pine for one lost, to have a broken heart. But as you wept, your other hand fisted. Your jaw clenched. Your face turned red with rage. You pounded your fist on the desk as you wept.”
Alex swallowed at the memory of the heat of that emotion. “What of it? I was angry.”
“You were angry at death for taking him. You were raging against death itself. You raged against death because life means that much to you. You’re the right man, Alexander Rahl. You’re the man I came here to find.”
Alex listened to the rain as he thought about her words.
“Then that bell rang,” she said. “I saw Bethany’s reflection in a window.
“In that instant I saw all that was about to be lost.
“We’re still struggling to learn to come here. It’s very difficult and takes us quite some time to craft a lifeline. Passing into the great void is daunting beyond imagining.”
Alex couldn’t picture such a thing. “In what way?”
Jax stared off into the memories for a moment. Flashes of lightning cast her face in an otherworldly bluish light.
“It’s like leaping off a cliff into eternal night . . . falling without end. Every second you expect to hit the bottom. Your muscles and nerves ache in expectation of a
sudden, bone-shattering impact. An eternity of fear is compressed into every one of those moments that you exist in a place without anything but that fear.
“At first you may feel like you have leaped into endless night, but a point comes when you realize that there is no up, no down, no hot, no cold, no light, no sensation of any kind, not even breathing, not even your own heart beating. You are without anything that makes you feel alive.
“In that moment comes panic.”
When lightning hit nearby, giving off a loud crack of thunder that shook the Jeep, Alex jumped. Jax didn’t. It was as if she was in another place beyond the reach of the real world.
“How long does it take?” Alex finally asked after she had been silent for a time. “How long must you endure such a thing?”
Her haunted eyes stared unblinking into memories. “You feel as if you have somehow plummeted into eternity. You feel alone beyond anything I could explain.
“There comes a time when you begin to believe that you’ve died. You can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything. You feel as if you must be dead.”
Jax seemed to force herself to abandon the memory, as if staying there any longer might cause the place to snatch her back. She took a purging breath and looked over at him.
“When I start for this world I have a reference point found with the aid of magic, so from here there is no way for me to find a reference point in my world, no way to know where to return to. That’s why I need a lifeline to pull me back through that eternal void to my world. Without a lifeline there is no way to return.
“When I went back the last time I took the painting you gave me, but I lost it in the void. I loved that painting and wanted more than anything to take it back with me for others to see. I held it as tightly as I could, but I lost it. I don’t remember where or how it was gone, it just was. That experience proved what we had thought—things can’t be brought back from this world to ours.
“I’m sorry, Alex, that I lost your beautiful gift.”
He offered her a smile of comfort. “I’ll paint you another.”
She nodded her thanks for his understanding.
