“This is where she is,” Aira Tär Keria explained, using her fingers to manipulate the map of Varuna while Liv and Sidonie leaned over the old woman’s shoulders to look. “It was designed as an emergency backup facility, in case Corsteris was ever destroyed.”

Liv was amazed at just how large the western continent actually was. She could pick out the Airaduinë river by the rift that was marked midway between the coast and the mountains, and she saw that there was easily as much land on the western side of the range as there was on the east. The rift that Aira pointed out was labelled ‘Menis Vestheris.’

“Corsteris?” Sidonie asked, while Liv was scanning the map.

“The city that was destroyed when Tamiris threw down a portion of the ring on the last of the Vædim,” Aira explained. “It was the center of their world. Every one of them had a dwelling there, in addition to the homes they made for themselves in whatever place best suited their desires. My mother told me it was the first place they built when they came to this world. She liked to remind us that both Eld and humans were nothing more than animals when they found us.”

“Port of Stars?” Liv asked, checking her best translation. The elder nodded. “And Menis means mountain, or peak.”

“Nightfall Peak is how I would translate it,” Aira said, after thinking for a moment. “Though it carries the connotation that the west is the direction in which the sun sets, when night falls, and that doesn’t come through so well in Lucanian. It’s drifted too far from Vædic.

“The waystone was right where you said it would be,” Rose called from behind them, and Liv spun to see that she was just stepping off a mana disc at the top of the shaft. Arjun followed the dark haired young woman across the room toward them. “And it looks undamaged. I don’t recognize most of the sigils on it, however.”

“That’s no trouble,” Aira said, dismissively. She walked over to the right hand pane of glass, and began to manipulate the sigils there rapidly.

“It means that it’s less useful for us,” Liv pointed out.

Aira chuckled. “The private waystones used by the Vædim themselves are adjustable,” she explained. “The location sigils displayed in the stone right now would be the ones that my mother and I used most often when we lived here, stored for convenience. But I can set up any dozen sigils we like. Let’s see. The waystone in Varuna where our troops are fortifying, of course. Al’Fenthia, for convenience. Mountain Home.”

“The Tomb of Celris and Whitehill,” Liv requested, and watched as the old woman’s knobby fingers moved briskly over the surface of the glass.

“This one, I think you’ll appreciate,” Aira said, choosing a sigil that Liv had never seen before. “In any event, I’ve locked Ractia out of affecting this rift, and denied her access to this waystone as well. The eruption should die down within the next few hours.”

“This is a lot less desperate than the Well of Bones,” Arjun observed. “Not a bit of fighting since we’ve come inside the tower – my greatest concern is how everyone is holding up to the mana density.”

“I’m not having a problem with it at all,” Liv said. “But I do want you to pay attention to yourself, Rose, and Sidonie.”

“Every rift you’ve gone into until now, I imagine you’ve gone as an enemy,” Aira said. “But this tower is under my control.” The old woman tapped a finger against the thorned circlet on her brow. “And it doesn’t surprise me, Livara, that you’re adapting to a higher mana environment. Your Vædic heritage is strong. Very strong.”

Liv shrugged. “Not as strong as my father or grandfather.”

“By definition,” Aira agreed. “Though not by the degree you think. Come along, children. There’s something I want to show you.” She turned and crossed the room, heading for the shaft. All five of them stepped onto the blue mana disc that formed there, and rode it down from the top of the tower.

“I wondered,” Sidonie said, as they descended past one floor after another, “whether you might allow me to remain in Al’Fenthia, elder.”

Liv turned to look at her friend in surprise.

“You’ve made the argument that we need to learn more about how all this –” Sidonie waved her hand to indicate the tower – “works, and I agree with you. Is there any place in the world better for me to do that? Elder Aira, if you would be willing to teach me, of course. This tower is more intact than any other rift we’ve been to, and none of those places have an expert who actually lived during the age of the Vædim.”

Aira led them off the disk and in the direction of the waystone while she considered her answer. “We’ve always held back from teaching humans too much about how to control the rifts – and even how to exist safely inside them,” she admitted. “It is important to the survival of my people they not all be destroyed. You’ve already learned more than most of your people, just from having Livara teach you how to handle the ambient mana without dying.”

“When we were in Lendh ka Dakruim,” Liv broke in, “Vivek Sharma told me that Ractia’s return was going to force the world to change. That just going on the way people had been doing things for the past thousand years wouldn’t be capable of stopping her. What happens if you die tomorrow, elder? Will everything you know be gone?”

The tower waystone was set aside in a small, circular room, and it looked to be exactly the same size as the one that Liv, Arjun and Wren had found at the Well of Bones. Rose stopped when she saw it.

“The sigils really are different,” she exclaimed in surprise. “I know you said you could change them, elder, but – it’s made of stone.”

“One of the enchantments layered beneath the waystones utilizes Stai to make adjustments,” Aira explained. “Come along, children.” She stepped out onto the waystone, cast about for a particular sigil, and bent down, pressing her hand to it. Light began to shine out from the sigil, and then spread over the entire stone.

“Where are we going?” Liv asked, but she stepped after the old woman just the same. If they’d trusted her to lead them this far, she saw no point in arguing over their destination now. Her friends followed her lead.

“Somewhere no one has been since the end of the war,” Aira said, with a small smile on her lips. “Allow me to enjoy my surprise.”

Light flared around them, carrying the world away and replacing it with darkness.

☙

When Liv returned to herself, she and her friends stood in a small room that matched the waystone they’d departed from. Unlike the tower room, however, this one was closed off by a set of metal doors – identical to the ones they’d had to breach in the mountains, or that Liv had seen in the Tidal Rift.

Aira raised a hand, and the doors opened. She walked through without hesitation, into an ancient gloom, and lights set into the ceiling began to glow softly. Everything was clean and undamaged, straight lines or gentle curves with no imperfections. Liv and her friends followed the old woman out and found themselves in the familiar layout of a rift control room – with one, heart-stopping difference.

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Rather than a back wall hewn from rock or crafted of metal, there was a great window, higher than any of them was tall, and thirty or forty feet long. The window did not look out onto a valley below, as Liv might have expected.

Instead, as far beneath them as a dream, their world itself slowly turned.

Liv couldn’t help but walk slowly across the control room, drawn to the window. Unlike the paned glass of even the most modern windows in Freeport, this was one enormous, slightly curved piece, with not a single blemish or flaw.

The world was mostly blue and white: the blue of the ocean, the white of the clouds. She could see the coastline of Lucania, however, quite clearly. It was familiar from map after map of the kingdom, but what was odd at first glance was that the northern and eastern borders weren’t at all visible. The land simply continued on into what she knew was Lendh ka Dakruim and the Elden lands of the north. How bizarre, to think that the borders between kingdoms were simply marked with a quill pen, and that the world itself not only did not care in the slightest, but it was not even aware.

The colors were vibrant - green across much of the land, where the spaces between the towns and cities were thickly forested. The greatest rivers were clear, ribbons of blue that wound across the continent, and to the north Liv could see the white of ice and snow, and knew that somewhere in that vast expanse was Kelthelis. And then around the world was an endless black, dark as midnight, spangled with stars – more stars than Liv had ever seen before.

“My mother took me up here for the first time when I was a little girl,” Aira Tär Keria said, and even her voice was hushed from awe. “I will never forget that moment, for as long as I live. I wanted to share it with you young people.”

“There’s so much of it,” Sidonie breathed. “And our maps aren’t quite right. I have to –” Liv’s friend sat down on the floor and pulled out her notebook, furiously flipping to a blank page.

“They won’t ever be exact,” Aira told her. “The world is a ball, and your paper is flat.”

Liv glanced over to see that the old woman was grinning in delight. “We’re in the ring, aren’t we?” she asked.

“Yes,” Aira confirmed. “What remains of it. Enough for our purposes, I believe. I need you and your friend Arjun to come with me.” She turned toward another set of doors, and began to make her way across the room.

“What about me?” Rose asked.

The old woman shrugged. “Enjoy the view, or come with us.”

Rose hesitated for a moment, and then hurried to catch up with Liv. The three of them followed Aira down a series of hallways, past door after door. As they walked, lights glowed along the ceiling, flickering to life.

Liv could feel the mana density around them: as thick as the depths of a greater rift, but without the wild fluctuations present during an eruption, or near something like the corpse of Costia. “Is this what they were trying to make the whole world feel like?” she asked.

“That is my understanding,” Aira said. “And from what my mother told me, this is the mana level of the place they came from.” She stopped at one door among many, raised her hand, and it opened. Within, lights flickered to life, revealing a raised bed and a pane of glass, like the ones they had seen before in control rooms. Sigils lit on the glass. “Lay down on the bed, Livara.”

“This is a healer’s room, isn’t it?” Arjun guessed. “But I don’t see any surgical tools. They would have just used words of power, though, wouldn’t they?”

“A combination of Cost, Ract, and Cail, for the most part,” Aira said. “There are healing enchantments layered into the construction of that table that could bring a person back from the very edge of death. But the reason I brought you here, Livara, is so that we can understand what is happening in your body.”

Liv had already stepped over to the bed, but now she paused. “What do you mean?”

“You told us what you did in the Well of Bones,” Aira explained, setting herself in front of the pane of glass. “You consumed what remained of a goddess, child. Did you think that would have no effect on you? Lie down.”

“I know that I can hold more mana now,” Liv admitted. “And her magic warped my bones. But we dealt with that.”

“Have you found it easier to enter rifts? More comfortable, perhaps?” the old woman inquired.

“Perhaps a bit,” Liv admitted. She hesitated a moment longer, and then climbed up onto the bed. Once she’d swung her legs around, she let herself lie back. By turning her head, she could see the glass, and watch as the elder began to touch it with her fingers, manipulating the sigils.

“I’ve never specialized in healing,” Aira admitted. “I couldn’t do this on my own. In fact, this may be the only place left in the world that can do what we need.” A colored outline of a woman’s body appeared on the glass, with sigils appearing rapidly all around it.

Arjun leaned forward, narrowed his eyes, and read alongside the elder. “What does this mean?” he asked. “What changes?”

“I suspect that doing what she did would have killed anyone without a good deal of Vædic blood,” Aira explained. “Any house in the north would kill to have a descendant like you, Livara. The blood of the old gods ran strong in you.”

“You keep saying that,” Liv said. “But I’m half human.”

“You are. And you might think you’re half Eld,” the old woman said. “But the truth is much different. According to what I’m seeing here, you’re actually closer to half Vædim.”

“What?” Liv sat up before she’d even realized she’d moved, and certainly before she could stop to consider whether doing so would cause problems to the ancient enchantments that Aira was clearly employing. In a heartbeat, Rose was at her side, and Liv realized that having a hand to squeeze was something she very much wanted.

“Things are not inherited evenly,” Aira explained. “Two parents with brown eyes may have a child whose eyes are blue. Things like that can skip generations, and come back in grandchildren, for instance. The Vædim were able to pick and choose, which is how we ended up with distinct families of Eld who look so different. But mortals like you and I simply get the children that fortune gives us, Livara. In your case, you inherited more from Celris than perhaps anyone else in your family since your grandfather himself.”

“What does that mean?” demanded Rose. “Is that why she’s so good at magic?”

“Partly. Another part is simply talent, and that’s all her own. It means that by the time she’s done developing, her mana reserves will be truly immense,” Aira explained.

“It explains her accelerated healing rate,” Arjun observed, his eyes focused on the glowing sigils.

“And I would expect that your aging will slow even more than you might have been expecting,” the old woman said. “It’s difficult to give an exact number.”

“Take a guess,” Rose said, and Liv could feel the other girl’s hand trembling in her own.

“With the effects of magic? She might have reached four hundred,” Aira said. “Before the Well of Bones. Do you understand what’s happening, Arjun?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not truly. I could study this for years and only understand half of it. But I don’t need to comprehend the cause to see the effect. Your body is changing, Liv. It’s adapting to the mana.”

“What do you mean?” Liv asked. Four hundred. Seven years ago, in Freeport, Ambassador Sakari had guessed that she would live perhaps two hundred years. Now Aira was telling her that she would last twice as long. Long enough that she’d not only outlive Rose and Sidonie, Arjun and Teph, Matthew and Triss and all the rest, but their children and their grandchildren, too. Everyone she’d ever known in Whitehill or at Coral Bay would be gone and forgotten, and she would remain.

“The Vædim don’t just need mana to survive,” the old woman explained. “In a very real sense, they are mana. At least as much mana as flesh and bone. The rush of mana you absorbed from Costia is changing your body – making you more like the old gods.”

“That’s why you guessed she was growing more comfortable in the rifts,” Arjun concluded. “You suspected this was happening.”

“The Vædim can’t live outside the rifts,” Liv said. “Is that going to happen to me?”

“Right now, you’re nowhere near that point,” Aira assured her. “The rifts are more comfortable for you, and leaving them will feel unpleasant at first, but you will get used to it quickly. Like coming down out of the mountains to visit the lowlands. No worse than I feel – your grandfather was similar.”

“Right now,” Liv repeated. “What about in a few months, or a few years?”

“Difficult to say,” Aira admitted. “The process may slow or halt. There may be a point past which what you did in the Well of Bones can push you no further. A limit imposed by your human heritage. The conditions are simply unprecedented.”

Rose pulled her hand away from Liv’s, turned to face the wall, and took several steps away.

Liv looked back over to where Aira and Arjun stood in front of the pane of glass. “Was there anything else you needed to do with me, right now?” she asked.

The old woman shook her head. “No. We have confirmed what I suspected, but I don’t know enough to do anything about it.”

“Could Rose and I have a moment alone, please?” Liv asked. “We can meet you both in the control room.”

“Of course, child,” Aira said. Arjun opened his mouth, as if he might protest, but the elder took him by the arm and pulled him out into the hallway, allowing the door to close behind them – and leaving Liv alone with Rosamund.