“Can I go nowhere without someone trying to kill me?” Vhalla whispered. “The Emperor himself wishes it; some clearly side with him.” She motioned to her tattered cape. “The North thinks I am not even human.”

“I should have never let you go alone,” he cursed softly. “Not all wish you dead.” Aldrik’s mailed hand smoothed out her frizzy hair, unruly in its awkward length just beyond her shoulders.

The ink she had used to dye it had almost faded, and Vhalla had given up trying to tame it into a Western style. “Some look to you, they admire you. There are some who think you a demon and others a goddess.”

“I want to go home.” Her fingers scraped against his armor, desperate for purchase.

“I will take you there.” Aldrik grabbed her hands. “We will go together. We will return South, and you will stay by my side.”

Vhalla stilled.

“I need to Project.” She released her hold on him and whatever words had been brewing behind his eyes. It wasn’t the time for them. “No one can return until this ends.”

Aldrik nodded and helped her out of her armor before sitting at the small desk, already cluttered with papers. He pushed them around until he had a blank sheet before him. His quill was at the ready.

Vhalla sprawled out on the bed and took a deep breath. Home, Vhalla paused over the thought, staring at the ceiling. Somehow, she realized, home was no longer the farmhouse in the East or the four grand walls of the Imperial Library. Vhalla turned to Aldrik, but he was oblivious to her momentary attentions. Home had become wherever he was. And she would do what she needed to do to return to the palace with Aldrik.

Vhalla closed her eyes and slipped out of her body.

VHALLA STOOD BEFORE the massive entrance to the fortress. A dry moat had been dug out at the base of the stone walls, wide and deep. It was ready to swallow any who dared attack, ready for archers to rain arrows down from the walls upon the unfortunate souls.

The drawbridge was closed, a massive stone archway that was slotted nearly perfectly into the wall. The wall resisted her presence, and Vhalla had to force her way through. It was definitely something that had been crafted in part with magic.

I’m in, she reported back to Aldrik when she was stable again. “Excellent,” his voice echoed through her physical ears and back to her as clearly as if he stood alongside her. “Tell me what you see.”

It’s a dark and narrow hall. Some kind of pot hangs above, and it appears they also have rubble piled in chutes behind wedges that are attached to rope. Vhalla listened to the sound of his scratching quill, speaking only the necessities so he could keep up.

“They plan to close the gate as defense against a first wave,” Aldrik observed. “You have already earned your merit and you are only a step in.”

Forward, she spoke her progress, it opens up. There’s space before the second wall.

“Second wall?” Papers shuffling.

Yes, my parrot.

Aldrik’s deep chuckle resonated through her. “We’ve heard no mention of a second wall. Describe it.”

After the first wall there’s a stretch, maybe the width of four men, stretched head to toe, and then a second wall. There are catwalks connecting to the outer wall. But I only see one ground entrance. Vhalla proceeded around the perimeter of the circular city.

The walk was unnatural, and not just because she experienced it through Projection. The space between the walls hummed with magic, one radiating off the next. Vhalla stilled. There was an old power here. It seeped from the depths of the earth and fertilized the soil and the people who lived upon it.

Two Northerners passed on a catwalk above, engaged in a heated conversation in a thick language foreign to Vhalla. It wasn’t the strange and melodic dialogue that had entrapped her. It was the bow in the hand of one.

They repeated one word over and over with particular venom, Gwaeru.

Do you speak the tongue of old Shaldan? Vhalla asked as the two archers passed across the catwalk and into the interior wall.

“I barely speak Western,” Aldrik sighed.

I think Gwaeru means Windwalker.

“Now how could you possibly come across that tidbit?”

I believe I just saw the woman who tried to shoot me down, Vhalla thought darkly.

“Remember her face so that I may have the pleasure of killing her myself.” Protectiveness gave an edge to Aldrik’s voice that would sound bitter to anyone else. But, to her ears, it resonated warmly.

I’m going to go through the second wall. It seems older, made of a different sort of stone than the outer one. It feels like solid magic. Vhalla stood at the oppressive wall. The shifting currents of magic Vhalla saw all seemed to be stilled by the stone.

“We will need our best Groundbreakers then.” She could hear the scratching of Aldrik’s quill again.

Vhalla paused their conversation to pass through the wall. It completely muddled her magical senses and, for a panicked moment, Vhalla thought she’d somehow fallen into her Channel again. She pushed forward, desperate for air. The ground would smother her magical form alive if she let it.

On the other side, Vhalla thought she could breathe again—metaphorically speaking at least—until she saw the scene before her. By the Mother ...

“What is it, Vhalla?” Aldrik asked worriedly.

Aldrik ... Vhalla tried to process what she saw.