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Oliver blinked. “I’m sorry. It sounded like you said–”
Nali gripped his biceps, hard, fingers digging bruises through his layers of shirts and coats. His pale eyes flashed wildly; the tendons stood out in his throat. “Listen to me. He’s here now, on this plane, and he’s looking foryou.”
“The Sel–”
“The emperor of the Sels. The Immortal Emperor Unchallenged, Romanus Tyrsbane.”
Oliver realized that he’d never known the Selesee emperor’s name. He was always referred to simply as “the emperor.” More a looming figurehead than a man, a threat not unlike the monsters from fairy stories that children used to scare one another. But he’d never stopped to consider his name. There was something awful and too-intimate about hearing it, and from Náli, of all people.
His pulse tripped and quickened, Náli’s panic infectious. “You saw him?”
“Yes, and he’s bloody terrifying.”
“Why is he looking for me?”
“I don’t know. He called you a ‘red whore.’ Something about your magic. About how you stole it.”
“I didn’t steal–”
“Iknow, but he’s huge, and he’s angry, and he’s got this massive fucking sword, and he’s not exactly reasonable!”
Oliver took a deep breath, and then another. He’d been called a whore more than a few times in his life; that wasn’t new or even that insulting, given his current position. Last laugh, and all that. But the slur landed a little differently when huge, angry emperors with massive fucking swords delivered it – even by proxy.
“All right,” he said.
“What do you meanall right?”
“What do you want me to say?” Oliver asked, voice gone shrill. “I don’t…”Know what to do, he started to say. But held off. Because Náli was very young, and very frightened, and Oliver supposed it was his duty to take the situation in hand.
“All right. Hold on.” He closed his eyes, and willed himself to wake up.
“What are you doing?”
He opened his eyes, and stood still in the field of waving gray grass, their drakes greeting each other with sniffs and blue-tongued licks over their heads. “Thinking.” It wasn’t a complete lie. “Where did you come from?” Still holding the boy’s shoulders, he leaned sideways to peer around him. Low, undulating hills stretched as far as he could see in all directions, the sky a washed-out blue so pale it was nearly white, the faint edgings of shadow all that delineated the clouds.
“The village,” Náli said, without explanation.
There were so many things Oliver didn’t understand about being on a different plane of existence. Truly, he’d thought these visions of his nothing more than dreams; at most, dreams that he shared with his drake, which wouldn’t have been unreasonable given their mental connection. But if he’d transcended into some sort of spirit realm, if they truly walked in the valley of in-between souls, then he had no idea what the laws of this place were. Could Mattias have been killed? Could they be killed? If he faced this emperor now, what would occur?
“Oliver,” Náli prompted, shaking him.
“Right. Yes. The village?”
“The first village. The very beginning of Aeretoll. I’ve been going there since I was little.”
“Ah, so you can walk me through it.”
“We have togo.”
Oliver very much did not want to go. He was full of questions: hadn’t Dreki Hörgr been the first village?Wasthis Dreki Hörgr? Some flipside, through-the-veil version of it? And he still had no idea what sort of physical limitations they possessed here. He hadn’t brought a sword – nor known such a thing was possible. If he faced an emperor empty-handed, and got cut down for his troubles, could he be killed? Would his body back in the waking world stop breathing? That was an unpleasant image: Erik rolling over beneath their heaps of furs and flinging an arm across a corpse.
But there was Mattias to think of, and Náli’s big-eyed, frantic terror, so he said, “Yes, of course. You two lead the way.”
They remounted – Oliver with the aid of stirrups, Náli scrambling with a firm grip on the spines on Valgrind’s neck – and took to the sky, flying back the way Náli had come. Valgrind, at least, seemed calmer in his father’s presence, neck stretched long, tail whipping behind, his wingbeats sure and quick. Náli’s face, though, was a grim mask of worry, and Oliver didn’t know if the tears winking at the corners of his eyes were the result of the wind, or fear for Mattias.
Eventually, a dark smudge appeared along the horizon. It resolved, as they flew, into the jagged, black silhouette of a mountain range, stamped boldly against the faded sky. The peaks grew larger and more distinct the closer they drew, and then Valgrind swung wide, and angled himself, and dove.
Oliver could hear Náli berating the drake, and chuckled to himself as Percy executed a much more reasonable, swooping descent that spiraled them over what was indeed a village.
