“Very sure.” She smiled at him. “Oh, do get up! It’s not like I’m royalty or some such thing.”

He did as she asked, then grinned at her. “Things are truly different here,” he said. “They warned us, but I don’t think I realized just how different they’d be. Back in the islands I’d never have dared speak to you, much less—uh, well.”

“Uh, well what?”

He laughed, she joined him, and they stood smiling at each other while the rest of the shipload of immigrants hurried past down the pier to their new homes on the land.

In the Halls of Light, they spoke to him of the work ahead.

They stood in pillars of crystal, pale lavender or mottled silver. They themselves appeared as shafts of light, glinting inside their crystal towers. He himself was but a glimmer of light, a beam of sun, perhaps, glinting on a stream, flickering, uncertain. Yet he heard them.

“They have all been born,” they said in a thousand voices that were yet one voice, “those twisted souls you once failed, they who are called changelings. They have left behind the world of images, and they must learn now to live in the world of flesh, as children of the Westfolk, Children of Air. It is your task to help them learn. Will you remember?”

In the Halls of Light there are no lies.

“I will try to remember,” he said. “I will strive to remember.”

“You will be helped to remember. Aderyn, your name was once. You will learn to fly again.”

In the midst of the light a lack of light appeared, a shapeless thing, not a true darkness, for there can be no darkness in the Halls of Light, but still, it opened. He stepped to its edge. Among the crystal pillars a tiny flame of gold burned, quivering. He could hear its cry of pain.

“You’ll follow me, Evandar,” he said. “In due time you will follow me, and I shall father you a body. Dallandra’s child will be your mother, and she will cherish you. They have promised.”

“So we have,” they said. “Farewell and remember!”

He took one more step and fell, soaring, spiraling down and down through indigo light until he floated above a pair of golden auras that marked elven bodies. He recognized Valandario even in his disembodied state, because once she’d been his pupil in the dweomer. Deep within her body he perceived a dark knot of unensouled flesh, his body to come. For a moment he hesitated, remembering the freedoms of the Halls of Light. Courage! he told himself.

With a wrench of will he surrendered to the pull of the flesh. He sank down into the dark prison and slept.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

AUTHOR’S NOTE