Lillandra

"How is it that you look so young?" Arai asked Lillandra, out of the blue.

They were walking down a dirt road that cut through a large wheat field, which stretched almost as far as they could see, from one end of the horizon to the other. The yellow of the field contrasted sharply with the deep blue of the sky, and it made for a lovely sight; Arai had never seen a landscape like this in Velon. Velon was a rocky, mountainous country, covered in snow eight months out of the year, and its skies were almost perpetually gray -- nothing like this lush, verdant land, where the sun seemed to shine almost every day.

They had just departed yet another little village, where they had successfully stocked up on supplies, and the lovely weather, and the lovely surroundings, had Arai in high spirits. As they made their way out of town, he had noticed the shine in Lillandra's long, dark hair, and the soft curve of her face, and it had got him to wondering.

She had evidently been lost in thought, because it took a moment for her to answer. "What did you say?"

"I asked you why you looked so young," he said. "You must be over a hundred years old, but you look like a teenager. Is it magic? Did you find the secret to eternal youth? Or is that face an illusion, too?"

"It's not an illusion," she said. "I told you that before. This is my true form, my true face."

"So how can you look like that? Are you really a hundred years old?"

"I am," she said, with some hesitation, "but I've been sleeping a lot."

"Sleeping?"

"A magical sleep. It takes a long time to gather enough magia to make zemi -- five years for an Eagle's Wing, ten for a Crux of Illusion. I needed more magia than I could gather in a single lifetime for the zemi I wanted to create. So from time to time I would inhale a Phial of Amaranthine to put myself into a magical sleep, while I waited for the necessary magia to gather in my cauldrons. I slept for months, sometimes years at a time. And while I was in that state, I did not age."

"How old were you when you conquered Velon?"

"Sixteen."

Arai reeled. "But you don't look more than seventeen or eighteen now. Does that mean you've been asleep for almost all of the hundred years you've ruled Velon? You haven't been awake for more than a few months since you overthrew King Reemus?"

She nodded.

"I'm not sure I believe that."

"Believe what you want. It's the truth."

From the moment he had first seen her, in the guise of this teenage girl, he had assumed it was a trick of some sort -- an illusion, perhaps, like the one she had worn when he had fought her in the Nightfall. If she really had been in a magical sleep for most of a century, however, then she really was a teenage girl, at least mentally, with only sixteen or seventeen years' worth of memories and experiences. It would explain a lot, he had to admit. Lillandra was very intelligent, and was obviously a magical prodigy, but she could be naive as well, and as moody and sullen as a typical teenage girl.

He couldn't be sure that she was telling the truth about this magical sleep, though -- in fact he couldn't be sure of anything she told him. Though they had spent over a month together -- and in rather close proximity -- he still didn't trust her. She was the Night Queen, and she had turned his friends to stone.

It had been about two weeks since they had left the little village of Ada. They had been on the road ever since, having made their way through forests, fields, and any number of small villages on their way to Kingsaile, the capital of Addis. They walked, mostly, but were occasionally able to hitch rides on the backs of farmers' wagons for two or three miles at a stretch. They encountered very little traffic around Ada, but they began to see more and more people as they drew closer to the capital, and the condition of the roads began to improve as well, transitioning from winding dirt paths to long, straight roads paved with flat stones.

It was on the road to the capital that they first began to see elves. Neither of them had ever seen an elf before, but they were apparently rather common in Addis, which shared a border with several elf-kingdoms to the east. The first elves they encountered were a group of four -- three men and one woman -- and they were happy to stop for a moment and answer Arai's questions.

These elves were traders, apparently, making their way back home after a successful sale in the capital. They were tall, slender, and fair-haired, with high cheekbones, high foreheads, and, most interestingly to Arai and Lillandra, very long ears, which came to points. They were all very beautiful, especially the woman, who was so stunning that she actually took Arai's breath away.

Arai explained that they were foreigners and that they had never seen elves before, and to forgive them if they stared. The elves clearly didn't believe this, but they played along.

"I'm told that elves live a very long time," Arai said. "Thousands of years."

They all laughed at that. "Most of us never make it to three hundred," the woman explained. "But we don't begin to show our age until the very end of our lives. It probably gives a false impression."

"Do you mind if I ask how old you are?" Arai asked.

"It's impolite to ask a woman her age," she said teasingly. "I'm seventy-eight."

Arai was amazed, for the woman looked about the same age as Lillandra. "Do your people intermarry with humans?"

"Is that a proposal?" she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

"I...no, I..."

She smiled at his embarrassment. "It happens, from time to time," she admitted, "but it is not common. An elf can live almost three times as long as a man; this can make it hard for them to build a life together. A romance between an elf and a man will almost always end in tragedy. This is well known."

"Well known," the other elves muttered.

Because they were traders, and obviously well-traveled, he thought these elves might have heard of Velon, but none of them had, nor had they ever heard of Arliel's Holy Empire. This was disappointing, but the elves were good company, and he came away from the encounter feeling strangely exhilarated. He was very far from home, and he was worried about the state of Velon, but he couldn't help but be excited by the weird exoticism of this land.

Lillandra was intrigued as well, asking the elves questions about magic and what they knew of it. This group contained no magicians, however, and they claimed to have no special expertise.

That encounter had been several days ago, and they had seen several more elves since then -- most of them heading east, back to their homes, on the other side of the Fallhorn Mountains. Some of them seemed to have made their homes in Addis, however, living side-by-side with their human counterparts in the towns and villages outlying the capital.

Late the next day, after bartering for supplies at that little village, they finally arrived at the outskirts of Kingsaile. It was a huge, walled city, rising up like a mountain on the horizon. It was full of towers and palaces, and situated within a cluster of shimmering lakes, upon which hundreds of little sailboats could be seen. It was a beautiful sight; even Lillandra stopped and stared.

"It's bigger than Hammersvik," she commented.

Arai snorted. "It makes Hammersvik look like a mountain village. It's bigger than Salos. It's bigger than either of the Free Cities."

"You've been to the Free Cities?"

"Many times. I've been all over the Holy Empire."

She suddenly looked uneasy. "I don't like big cities."

"Neither do I. They're big, stinking cesspools, for the most part. There has to be someone here who's heard of Velon, though -- someone who can show us the way home."

And so they proceeded down the road, which ran right down to the city gates. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road -- farmers, delivering their crops; important-looking people riding in carriages; and ordinary peasants, tramping along on foot. There were several guards stationed at the gates, and they forced some of the wagon masters and carriages to pay a toll, but they left the peasants unmolested, and Arai and Lillandra were able to walk right into the city.

It was a big, bustling city; everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. It also appeared to be a prosperous one -- the buildings were in good condition, for the most part, and the roads were broad, straight, and paved with gigantic marble slabs that must have taken forever to lay. Most of the people they saw were well-to-do; in fact Arai didn't see a single beggar.

"Now what?" Lillandra asked, after they had walked some distance. "Where do we go?"

Arai frowned thoughtfully. They needed information, didn't they? He stopped a man on the street. "Excuse me," he said. "My companion and I are new to this kingdom. We're interested in learning more about its history. Do you have libraries here? Places of learning?"

The man frowned back at him. "There's the royal library," he said doubtfully, "but I don't think they'd let you in. It's for royals, after all. You could try the University, though."

"Do you know the way?"

He pointed them in the direction of the University, and twenty minutes later, they found themselves standing before its iron-wrought gates. To his surprise, there was a guard of some kind stationed at this gate, and he stopped them when they tried to enter. "Do you have a slate?" he asked them.

"A slate?"

"You're can't enter without a slate," he said, in a bored, officious tone. "Only students and faculty are allowed within."

"We just need to talk to someone," Arai said. "Could you arrange--"

But the man cut him off. "If you don't have a slate, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." And he shooed them away.

The man was very rude. Arai refused to let his temper get the better of him, however; he simply turned and walked away, Lillandra following at his heels.

"Now what?" she asked again.

"I have another idea," he said. Libraries and universities weren't the only places with books, after all. He stopped another passerby and asked him where he might find a bookseller.

Fortunately there was one very close by; apparently it catered to the university students. They found the place without difficulty and stepped inside.

It was a big, dusty shop, and there were books everywhere, piled on top of everything. It wasn't very busy; there were only a handful of customers browsing the shelves. A young man wearing a pair of spectacles was sitting behind a counter, and he jumped to his feet as soon as he saw them enter.

"Hello!" he greeted. "How can I help you today? Are you looking for anything in particular? We still have a few copies left of Tarl Abzot's latest, if that's what you've come for."

"Ah, no," Arai said. He looked around the room. There were so many books here; where would they even start? "Actually, we'd like to know about--"

"Cartography," Lillandra broke in. "Do you have any maps here?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Maps, eh? Let me have a look around. I think we still have a couple copies of Plint's Travels. Just came out last year." He checked something at his desk, then walked them over to one corner of the bookshop and removed a dusty tome from one of the dusty shelves. He blew on it. "Here we are. Plint's Travels. There's a map in there that folds out. It's a very unique touch; you don't see many of these."

He handed the book to Arai, who opened it up. The script was utterly alien to him, however; he couldn't make any sense of it. He showed it to Lillandra. "Can you read this?"

She looked it over for a moment and shook her head. "The spell I cast with the Stone of Many Tongues allowed us to speak their language. It didn't teach us how to read it."

"Wonderful," he groaned.

"You can't read?" the young bookseller asked doubtfully.

Arai ignored that. He set the book on a nearby table, found the map, and folded it out. Although he couldn't read the place names, he could make out the details of the lakes, rivers, and mountains. "Where is Addis?" he asked the young man.

The bookseller gave him a strange look, but he pointed it out to him anyway. "This is Addis," he said, using his finger to draw its borders. "And this dot here is Kingsaile."

"Is there a place called Velon on this map?"

The man looked it over. "I don't see it."

"Arliel's Holy Empire?"

He shook his head.

Frustrated, Arai pointed to the westernmost part of the map. "What about here? What is this region called?"

"Tarnak," he said. "Plint describes it in the book. It's a cursed land, a vast desert, where magia is so thick that monsters materialize out of the air almost constantly. No one lives there, expect for a few bandits, perhaps, hiding within the western mountains."

Arai groaned again. He knew this place; his father had been there once, and had told him stories about it. "The Scarred Lands. These are the Scarred Lands." The Scarred Lands were the easternmost lands Arai had ever heard of; they were thousands of miles east of Velon. But on this map, they were the westernmost feature, probably thousands of miles from Addis.

It was no exaggeration. They really were on the other side of the world.