Disclaimer: So the bits that are mine I'll dig up and take away with me when I'm done (smashing them into the ground repeatedly whilst cackling).

Notes: In answer to the Nonymouse exclamation about being alive, yup. I mostly am. I mean, no-one could be this much of a tyre-fire personified-as-a-person and not be alive, you know? As an example of this I direct you to this chapter's subtitle. You're welcome for the earworm.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Near – Far – Wherever you are

"How is your nose?" Halla gave Gillan an appraising look over a raised cup of faintly steaming herb tea. The Queen's Own grimaced in response, which Halla took to mean that Gillan had finally been cornered by a Healer who had set the break that Shadowflame had caused two days previously.

:The same Healer finally boxed Dadero into the Stables first thing this morning,: Regin told her. :I don't know what was in the poultice he was using, but I'm glad it's not been plastered all over my face.:

"My nose will be fine," Gillan said sounding unavoidably nasal. In deference to the domino mask of bruising covering his face he was confining his breakfast to coddled eggs with cheese, leaving the more hearty aspects of their shared table to Halla. "Dadero's too, although I can tell he's not impressed with the smell of the mess the Healers have covered him in, even if he isn't complaining."

Halla sat back in her chair, making the wood creak quietly, and looked briefly around the small, brightly sunlit morning room in the Royal Apartments that they were currently using. Although there was a long To Do list of the usual concerns that she and Gillan discussed over their breakfasts prior to starting the public parts of their respective working days, Halla couldn't really find it in herself to give two figs about whatever petty concerns the Court was managing to work itself up about. She sucked on her teeth as she decided how to ask what she wanted. "Do you know why...?"

Gillan sighed awkwardly and put his fork down with a chink against the sun-in-glory decorated plate that made up the breakfast service today, a gift from the current Son of the Sun, Ridan. "I think I've got the straight of it from Dadero, yes. I'm surprised that Regin hasn't filled you in."

Halla directed a pointed look inwards. "Quite," she said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the opaque sensation Regin was giving her. "And whilst I'm sure that it's the prerogative of the Companions to be mysterious, I am the Queen."

"Hm. Well." Gillan paused for a moment. "Shadowflame and D—Datti were paired up."

"Yes, I already knew that: Datti volunteering to carry Shadowflame gave that away."

Gillan shook his head. "No, Dadero—backed up by what Kit and Velaryn told him—says that D-Datti was partnering with Shadowflame in much the same way that Melli and Rainfox do. She was providing Shadowflame with an extra energy source and helping bolster her shield spells and so on. It's something that the Companions to Herald-Mages learn how to do."

"But she—" Halla wasn't entirely sure how to point out that Datti had only ever been associated with Gillan, and he had never been any kind of mage.

Gillan shrugged. "I don't know," he said flatly. "Getting that level of information from Dadero was like milking a stone."

:Regin?:

:It's something in the nature of being a Companion,: Regin said reluctantly. :But it still has to be perfected.:

"Regin says it has to be perfected," Halla relayed.

"Yes," Gillan agreed. "As far as Dadero can infer from what he was told D—she was improvising to a large extent. They were ambushed, after all. Time was not on their side for most of their stay in the south."

Halla bit her lip at the stiff way that Gillan tripped over Datti's name each time he had to use it. She was beginning to see the shape of what happened. "So Shadowflame was linked to Datti, mind-to-mind, and didn't have a chance to separate when—"

Gillan shivered faintly, a grey-green tinge underscoring his bruises for a long moment.

:From what Kit said I don't think they could have separated, even if they'd tried,: Regin put in. :And in trying there would have been...damage done.:

:Isn't there damage anyway?:

:Yes, but.: Regin went quiet for a long moment before reluctantly adding. :That damage was the cost of eliminating the threat that the blood mage posed. It's something that we—the Companions—know may be the author of our end. It's part of the risk we accept as Companions.: And wasn't that a pleasant thought for Hall to contemplate?

"So Shadowflame was first-hand witness to a Final Strike." Halla finally put down the tea cup she had been holding in the air, forgotten. "Have the Mind Healers made any progress with her or is she still sedated?"

"Hirrn and Melli kept her mostly sedated with magic whilst they were stuck down south... and Hirrn has been very vocal about addictive effects—because of Shadowflame's leg, so they were going to start waking her up later today. And...you are not entirely correct with what you said." Gillan shuddered and fell silent. Halla watched him carefully but the Herald seemed to be fighting an internal battle to keep what little of his breakfast he'd actually eaten in his stomach.

:Regin?:

A distinct sensation of a sigh. :I—I know that you need to know this but, Halla—:

:I am aware that it's unlikely to be pleasant, whatever it is. Hardly anything about this whole business has been. Just tell me; is this going to cause a diplomatic incident?:

:Not unless it comes from our end,: Regin said somewhat cryptically. :Although you must know that none of the Companions view it as such, and we won't back any kind of action that the Council tries to bring against Shadowflame or the Tayledras as a whole. As I said: we are well aware of what we may have to do in the defense of Valdemar.:

:What?:

:In fact, we've decided that outside of a select few, not even our Heralds are going to be told the full truth of it.: Regin sounded resolute in a way that Halla did not usually associate with her Companion.

:Tell me, Regin.:

:Datti didn't call down a Final Strike. We—Companions—can't do that. What we can do is assist and channel the Final Strike energies of our Chosen, to exponentially increase the...effect.:

Halla choked on nothing. "Are you telling me that Datti Chose Shadowflame and then almost immediately suicided?" she cried, shocked out of Mindtouch with Regin for a few moments. She barely noticed the pained noise that Gillan let out, scattered attention busy trying to focus on her Companion.

:No.: That...was most definitely not Regin. Halla jerked in her chair at the unfamiliar male Mindvoice. :I am afraid not, Halla.:

The thick sensation of sorrow edged with guilt that overlayed the sending gave Halla the clue she needed and she tentatively asked, :Dadero?:

:Yes.: A hollow silence. :Datti did not Choose Shadowflame. She managed to manufacture a Call somehow and Chose the blood mage. Kit and Velaryn have assured me that it was the only way to bypass the blood mage's shields. Once the shields were breached, Datti impelled Shadowflame to call a Final Strike through her. You can infer the rest.:

Halla was regretting the bread rolls she had eaten for breakfast. "Oh."

:Shadowflame...was part of a Choosing and also something like a repudiation,: Regin murmured in the back of her mind. :As well as being still here after a Final Strike. Given the amount of shields that Hirrn and Melli had been holding on her since the incident it's frankly a miracle that she could string two words together, let alone aim for noses.:

Halla dropped her head in her hands and massaged her temples in a vain attempt to subdue her suddenly ravening headache. "And Giff?"

Gillan cleared his throat, voice still sounding hoarse afterwards. "He won't speak to anyone and he won't leave Shadowflame's room in the House of Healing. I don't know if anyone knows what to do beyond wait and see."

"Beyond praying," Halla said flatly. "Gods above and below, what a disaster."

There were no words in reply, just a sensation of agreement from multiple directions.

.

.

Michael liked the lake front.

Well. He liked certain bits of the lake front, the bits that required a complicated amalgam of public transit and walking and a certain acceptance that sometimes the screaming-seizure-whatevers mean that he wakes up face down in an alleyway, probably missing his shoes.

The point was that the lake front, the bit of it you reached after public transit and walking and no shoes, had an almost total lack of people. At least, the abandoned and crumbling dockyard Michael had co-opted as his own fitted this description.

No shoes was a small price to pay for not feeling like your head was an orange in a juicer at all times.

Michael curled into the lee of a rusted wall of corrugated iron and flicked crumbled bits of concrete from the top of the dock wall into the oily looking water. A month and a half of appointments and medication and confusion had passed before he had managed to convince himself that he wasn't actually insane due to being abducted by a failed serial killer, and that what his psychiatrist had described as a hallucinatory coping mechanism could possibly actually be real.

Right. Talking horses are real and Michael wasn't insane. Some days he could barely convince himself.

Michael sighed and scratched as his grubby denim covered knee. There was enough sun today that he could almost-not-quite make out his reflection on the surface of the murky lake water, a thing that gave him pause even now. Some idiots would probably pay an absolute fortune to lumber themselves with silver-white hair like an obnoxious fashion statement. As far as Michael was concerned, they could have it.

Unfortunately—and ultimately one of the things that had formed the base of Michael's tentative theory that he didn't have scrambled eggs for brains—Michael had yet to find a hair dye that would last more than a scant few days before disappearing as if he'd never used. And, okay, so as a certified crazy person with a medical file you could beat small countries to death with, Michael wasn't exactly rolling in any amount of money that meant he could splurge on anything other than WalMart's best, but still.

He was pretty sure that the contents of a Sharpie wasn't meant to vapourise after three days of no hair-wetting.

After the Sharpie ink realisation, Michael had actually made a concerted effort to understand what the pills that his doctors wanted him to take were actually meant to do, and he...didn't stop, no, because that way almost definitely lay actual madness and a bout of screaming-seizure-whatevers that probably wouldn't end. But. He did modify—over the course of several painful days of reading in the library local to his crapshack apartment—just how much of what and when it was being taken.

Michael was pretty sure that a wide variety of people, starting with Hirrn and Trannen and working up from there, would pitch an absolute shitfit about how he was managing what he was ninety-nine percent sure were some actual Gifts, but until such time as any alternate reality people, giant mutant wolf-creatures or otherwise, rode up on a shiny white horse and took him home, Michael had decided that said theoretical people (even if they could chew his legs off) could suck it.

It wasn't like anyone in Valdemar had actually explained Gifts to him as anything other than the thing he definitely, completely and one hundred percent did not have, anyway, so Michael figured that he was doing as best he could and maybe at some point in the future he'd figure out something else.

His cheap-ass digital watch beeped sadly and Michael fumbled in his worn jacket pocket, eventually pulling out an amber plastic pill pot filled with off-white capsules. He took a moment to assess how he was actually feeling before shaking out three of the capsules and gulping them down dry.

By his reckoning, Michael could completely avoid the worst of rush hour today if he could keep on with just the white capsules until a half-hour before he wanted to move. Riding a bus utterly doped on anti-epileptic meds wasn't fun, but it was better than having to listen to everyone on the bus all at once.

Michael flicked another crumble of concrete into the water, eyes tracking the ripples that crawled out into the lake.

There was something supremely ironic about his life, and it mostly started with how he missed a dumb white not-horse like someone had scooped out half his heart. Okay, so there was also a massive nod to be given to the fact that he'd been the most unmagical thing in a world that seemed to regard magic as right up there with gravity when it came to physical laws and forces, and was now quite possibly the most magical thing in a world that contained some people who probably didn't even really believe in gravity—

Michael huffed out something that could have been considered either a laugh or a cough and pointedly tried to stop thinking magic because focusing on it like that would make the bits of his brain that were now mostly responsible for screaming-seizue-whatevers stretch out in a way that no amount of off-white capsules could counteract, and he could really do without pissing himself on an abandoned dockside at three in the afternoon.

Still. He missed his stupid not-horse.

.

.

Shadowflame was running, forest undergrowth whipping past her in a blur as Ayren called out in distress from above the canopy, unable to assist his Bondmate.

:Stay up there you featherbrained idiot!: Shadowflame shouted at the eagle. :If you come down here you'll get snagged in a bramble and those bloody things will eat you!:

The bloody things in question, a pack of wyrsa that Shadowflame had been meaning to track back to their den before going for help, were easily keeping pace with her. In fact—Shadowflame extended her Mage Gift as far as she dared and then found the breath to waste on a loud curse—they were herding her.

:Ayren—fly to the Vale! Get help! Get anyone!:

There was a split second between the menacing hiss and the impact that allowed Shadowflame to twist her body, rolling her shoulder so that she took the impact of the leaping wyrsa on her heavily padded scouting jacket. They both went down in a tangle of limbs, ending up in a bed of glossy green-black ferns and sharp-smelling leaf litter.

The wyrsa's claws caught in Shadowflame's jacket, scoring the treated leather almost the whole way through but thankfully not making contact with her skin and she lashed out with her climbing stick, feeling a fierce glee at the wet thump of impact that jarred up her arm. The weight from on top of her retreated with a hissing howl.

Shadowflame rolled to her knees and glared at the four wyrsa who had been chasing her; three with their attention locked onto her, the fourth writhing on the ground a short distance away with a obviously broken leg. She met the pack leader's challenging growl with a blood-stained one of her own. Time seemed to slow as the two flanking wyrsa charged in and Shadowflame flared out her shields, except that that made something inside her head pop and then she was falling falling falling and—

Shadowflame was running, hooves beating out the discordant jangle that made her grit her teeth. Despite being several acres in size the Field had felt absolutely stuffed to the gills with Companions, Heralds and Trainees today and all of them had been insufferable and nosy and staring at her. At least here, on a boring and unimportant (most important) road out of Haven she would find as much peace as she ever did.

There.

The gentle curve in the road, matching that of the lazy and calm river exactly is bordered by a sweep of catkin-trailing willow trees.

She slowed to a walk and counted to the seventh tree, one of the oldest in this little stand, bent and gnarled and probably not long for the world. The ground underneath the tree was smooth and moss-speckled. It would make a perfect place to fish from.

Sometimes she wanted to kick that tree into splinters.

The ground and tree both seemed to ripple like their reflections in the water.

Here was where she found—here she—what did she...?

(in the distance the Bell was ringing)

Shadowflame was not running, because frankly she was not an idiot and whatever the Clan Council wanted to tell her could damn well wait until she arrived there to have it told to her.

Perched a short distance ahead of her on a hertasi-carved mage-light holder that almost certainly had not been intended for eagles to perch on, Ayren cawed derisively and flipped his wings. Shadowflame barely got a satisfactory scowl at her bird before he was lofting himself into the air and flapping the short distance to the intricately decorated and open-sided meeting hall that curled around the base of two of the Vale's trees.

The mage grimaced and stumped after him, walking stick beating a counterpoint to her footsteps. Her leg burned like fire today, a remnant of wyrsa poison and the reactive scarring it caused that even the most Gifted of Healers could only do so much against. She refused to dose herself into comfortable oblivion with poppy or yellow lotus, so consequently her temper was even shorter than usual. The sight of all of the Elders of Clan k'Saurai gathered in the meeting hall had her biting down five uncharitable comments, three of which were possibly sarcastic enough to develop self-awareness and slink off into the undergrowth.

"Well?" Shadowflame came to a halt just barely under the sheltering canopy of the hall. "Which idiot set something irreplaceable on fire and why do I have to be the one that fixes it?"

:Sit down before you fall down.: Delivered with a snap that you could only produce if you were a Healer who was also an apex predator.

Shadowflame redirected her glare from Elder Summerbreeze to Hirrn, who merely sniffed and flicked one ear.

"Ah, Shadowflame, it is good to see you."

Lies, Shadowflame thought rebelliously. If you could, you'd ship me off to White Gryphon or somewhere equally distant. The pain from her leg somehow crawled up her back and started to chew on the base of her brain, making her eyes water and everything ripple like she was viewing it from under water.

That was—this wasn't how this memory played out. In reality she'd sat down after an argument with Hirrn that the Elders had pretended wasn't happening right under their noses, and then they'd told her that it was k'Saurai's turn to represent the Clans in Valdemar and they'd improbably and incomprehensibly picked her and—

—this was a memory.

It burst like a soap bubble and Shadowflame found herself standing in the warm dimness of a Waystation at night time, eavesdropping on Gillan fleecing their poor intern at a game of hinds and hounds and—memory—

—wobbling on newborn legs, seeing sunlight for the first time with these new eyes—but—

:Shadowflame.:

—an eagle the size of a large man's torso bumbling into a landing in front of her, kicking up dust and mixing up feathers that were still interspersed with the fluff of the nest.

:Mine!: the bird exclaimed imperiously. :My human!:

A feeling like she'd never known before—

—a feeling like nothing she'd ever felt before; hollow and scooped out, cut off and cauterised from Gillan's mind as duty trumped everything else and Dadero claimed him for his destiny as Monarch's Own—

:Shadowflame, wake up!:

Blackness like night, like eternity, like staring into the Void through a collapsing Gate, like—

—the inside of her own head, thrumming with remembered and actual pain, not all of it hers.

Shadowflame drew in a deep breath, immediately regretting that as her chest spasmed and she failed to muffle the burst of coughing that did nothing to clear her throat but everything to jam a red hot icicle behind her left eye and twist.

:Is this you actually awake?:

Even though the Mindvoice was diffident and barely a whisper, it rasped sandpaper-harsh across bits of Shadowflame's mind that felt bruised and torn. She moaned and managed to roll enough to curl up on her side. Instead of successfully blocking out the world the motion merely brought Shadowflame's attention to the fact that she was laying in a bed. A soft, comfortable bed in—if the vague not-echoing was anything to go by—a room that had been shielded by at least three different Adept-level mages.

The last time that she remembered laying down, it had been half on her bedroll, half on mouldy straw and bare stone, and for the express purpose of letting Hirrn and Melli tie her fractured mind back into something approaching a functionality that would keep her alive whilst the other mages built the Gate home.

Shadowflame cautiously cracked open her eyes, blinking away the inevitable tears at the influx of light until she could focus on the lime-scoured wooden side table a few inches from her nose.

"Wha—?"

:You are are awake!: A blur of movement in the room past the table and Shadowflame found herself staring at Giff.

"Wh're's Ayren?"

:He went hunting rabbits. Hirrn suggested it because he kept on staring at the Trainee Healers when they came in here. We think that your...dreams...were upsetting him.:

Shadowflame blinked and tried to decide whether or not she could manage to sit up. Yes, she eventually figured, because she was desperate for some water to soothe her abused-feeling throat, and if she could get her voice to work then she could make a start on any one of the hundred questions that wanted to burst free.

:Be careful!: Giff jerked forwards a step and then obviously restrained himself to simply watching with worry-wide eyes as Shadowflame inched her way into sitting slumped against the headboard of the bed.

She was actually somewhat surprised to look down at the blankets and discover that she still had two legs—there had been a distinct moment where she could remember being thrust backwards by the concussive force of a mage blast, leg bad leg trailing behind and then snapping with a sick sensation as she crumpled into some fallen masonry and broken furniture. Shadowflame also had jumbled memories of Hirrn swearing at her and ruthlessly stripping energy from anyone with an ounce to spare, but those were similar enough to the aftermath of the wyrsa attack that they were confusing more than anything. Part of her as also insisting that her legs should number four, but trying to grasp at those thoughts was vertigo-inducing and fruitless.

It took two attempts before Shadowflame could reach out and grasp the lightweight horn beaker of water from the bedside table with hands that trembled and shook with over-exertion and weakness combined.

The lukewarm water was heaven.

Shadowflame looked around the room as she sipped. It looked vaguely familiar—it felt vaguely familiar for some reason.

:You helped set the shields. This is one of the shielded rooms in the House of Healing.:

Shadowflame turned her gaze to the Companion in the room. The bubbling roil of questions settled into: "Why are you here and talking to me?"

Giff backed up a nervous step and ducked his head. Shadowflame was surprised to note that the stallion looked—not emaciated—but stretched out somehow, like a sheet of cotton pulled too tight. :The shields,: he said unconvincingly. :And—I wanted to be here when you woke up because—:

"Because what?" Something was trying to catch Shadowflame's attention, yet eluded her grasp.

:I...we? Are also shielding you. Um. Us.:

Shadowflame scowled, not even having to voice her complaint at the vagueness, and was rewarded by Giff letting out something like a sob and something like a moan and then pushing against her mind and—

Memory crashed into Shadowflame and she lurched, beaker of water forgotten to create a cool puddle in her lap as she leaned sideways and there—a bucket—

Retching up just a small amount of water was not fun.

"Wha—why—how?" Harsh, panting breaths that she tried to modulate, bring herself back under control.

:The battery took my Chosen with it.: The pure misery behind that statement made Shadowflame's stomach twist again, contorted by her's-and-yet-not grief and pain.

"Sheka."

:We...the Companions are holding a shield on me because—because—and. And on you because we think that when Datti, uh. Well, some of you went with her and some of her stayed with you.: Giff drooped in place. :I don't really want to be near them, and it's not really a good idea for me to leave this room for long. And. And normally the focus for something like this would probably be the Groveborn except, uh.:

A visceral and bitter twist of satisfaction accompanied the return of the memory of smacking both the Queen's Own Herald and Companion full in the face, and Shadowflame felt her mouth stretch briefly in the malformed offspring of a snarl and a smile. "Good. I'm glad I—" she hissed out.

"So." Shadowflame looked down at her damp lap and grimaced. "What now? Do I have to spend the rest of my life in this room thinking that I should be eating grass?"

:I—we don't know. Nothing like this has happened. The Mind Healers want to speak to you as soon as you're awake. I haven't told anyone that you are.:

"Oh. Thank you." Shadowflame chewed on her lip, rubbed absently at her bad knee—it actually felt strangely the best that it had done in years. "What about you?"

:Michael is not dead.: For that, at least, Giff managed to raise his head, eyes burning like blue fire before he abruptly slumped once more. :But he is gone and I can barely feel—there isn't a way back to him that I can sense.: A pause, then a hopeless whisper that Shadowflame is pretty sure she only hears because her personal shields are like tattered fishing nets rather than actual shields at the moment. :I think the way to him closed when that thing went back.:

Shadowflame blinked burning eyes, tried not to think of not-her memories of I love you I love you I love you Chosen I love you (I hate you) and slumped against the pillows bunched around her.

"Sheka."