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A flare of attention, great and terrible, turning their way.
“Oh,” Em said under his breath, “damn, I was hoping to stay quiet enough…”
“You’re bleeding!”
The circle, dinner-plate-sized, made of simple hasty pebbles, shimmered. A haze grew, stretched like a veil between stones.
“Go on.” Em’s voice was taut: summoning ghosts. “This isn’t the easiest thing I’ve done, and I don’t actually know what I’m doing, so would you please hurry…”
A rush of cold swept across Aric’s shoulders. It burned. It made his teeth rattle.
But it passed, like the sweep of a cloak, like the leap of a waterfall, like a flood of bodies half-tangible, bumping him, swarming up and outward, diving ahead, fading…
Em’s hand in his was colder. Em was trembling now. The blood had trickled along the rock, the side of his hand; as Aric watched, the layer of humanity slid and shifted under the surface, until Emrys looked much more elfin and unearthly than Aric had ever seen, edges laid bare and brilliant, lit up somehow and also stripped down to bones and magic, made hollow and incandescent, and exhausted by it.
Aric whispered, “I’m here, I’m here,” and held on. Hard. “You can stop—I said I won’t lose you, I won’t, we can stop it, we can—come back, you can rest first, can you hear me? Em?”
A shiver of spectral presence twined along his arm. Disappeared.
“Almost,” Em breathed back. “One or two more…”
An echo answered, a colder touch, thin as twigs and autumn dark. Almost done.
Em shut both eyes. “Yes.”
You would give so much.
Almost done, yes…
“Go,” Aric said. “Go. You’re hurting—”
We know.
We are…
Going.
Someplace new.
But, elf-child…a warning.
“I know,” Em whispered. “I know. But thank you.”
You know what you’ve done.
So bright, so shining.
And you opened that door.
You spoke that language.
When you choose, choose wisely.
“I’ve already chosen.”
Once you have. One time.
It will be…harder.
