The first knock at my brother's door went unanswered. The second prompted a simple "Come."
My mother stepped quietly into the room, interrupting my brother's vigil by Ajiana's bedside. She took a seat on the bed, and laid a hand on her granddaughter's forehead. "She seems the same."
A small nod of acknowledgement was all Jaffaran could manage in reply, and my mother's heart must have ached to see his forlorn expression. "That's a good thing," she tried to encourage him. "You know what's been happening. Others have been getting sick, all over Ajri. The fact that she's still the same..."
"I know," Jaffaran cut her off without looking up.
"She may yet recover."
"I know."
"All right," she said kindly, taking hold of one of Ajiana's hands and gathering her courage for the next step. "I need your help."
Jaffaran put his head in his hands, his shoulders slumping into a weary slouch. "You need me to stay away," he countered quietly. "Everything I've done has just caused more harm. You trusted me to help the Peninsula, and it's lost. I tried to help Savna, and she's gone." His voice broke on the last word, and he drew a shuddering breath. "Our family protected the Gate for thousands upon thousands of years, and it took me the blink of an eye to destroy it, and to put an end to everything."
My mother's brows knit together in concern, her lips tight together as she studied my brother, looking him up and down as if to memorize his appearance and the sound of his voice. "You must have hope," she finally implored him.
Jaffaran shifted uncomfortably in his seat, misinterpreting my mother's silence and her unwavering regard. "I know I should be helping," he eventually said, his cheeks flushing pink as he spoke. Wallowing in unproductive grief was out of character, no matter what tragedy might have prompted it. And he knew that his duty as a den'Rhelys heir precluded any further self-indulgence. "I know I should. But I don't know what. I don't know how."
My mother smiled sadly at the helplessness in his voice, letting go of Ajiana's fingers and standing from the bed. "I do know how," she said gently. "We've found a way to re-seal the Gate."
Jaffaran looked up immediately, turning in his chair with a disbelieving frown. "But it can't be re-sealed," he said. "All the writings – all the scrolls – they all say it can't be done."
"Not all," my mother replied. She paced back and forth in front of the archways to my brother's study, anxious and preoccupied. "The very oldest scrolls record the charm that was used to seal it the first time. What it requires is still possible, but… difficult. And it can't be done here. "
"Then where?" My brother stood up, as if to gather his boots and jacket. In an instant, his despair had turned to action. "I'll go. Wherever you need me to go, I'll go."
His words jarred my mother from her pacing, and looked up to face him with an expression mixing pride and distress. Her hand went to her heart as she blinked back unbidden tears. "I knew you would," she whispered. "That's what I was afraid of."
The oldest scrolls in our libraries contained the most powerful magic known to our family. They were written in the language of the first settlers of Ajri – legendary ancestors who had taken on mythic roles as the founders of our very civilization. My siblings and I had never seen the records. Only a few people even knew about them. There was too much power in their words for them to be widely studied. And they came from a very different time, before Ajri was settled the way it is now – before the houses were established, and the laws were written.
The charm to seal the Gate had come from that era, and it was a relic of those legendary days. Though the magic itself was in some ways simple, its requirements were not. To succeed, the charm had to be performed by nine generations of den'Rhelys. Each generation had to come from the same ancestor, but each generation had to combine those genetics with a different family. It was impossible in the Ajri of today. Even if we could have waited for nine generations, there were only four remaining genetic pools: the den'Rhelys, Pembina, jah'Itan and Nelayan. So the writings my brother knew were correct in that context. Re-sealing the Gate really was impossible.
But the oldest scrolls also spoke of different worlds, with different languages, and people, and climates. Where time ran at different speeds, and magic was either weak or nonexistent. And the oldest scrolls contained charms to travel between these worlds. It was there that my brother would need to go, and there that he would need to establish a new family. Nella had tried to volunteer when she heard what was needed, but my brother had already proved able to have children, and we didn't know what sort of magic there might be in the other worlds to help her if she could not.
So Nella and I promised to watch over Ajiana, and Jaffaran agreed to meet my mother that night in one of the towers at the corner of our grounds. She found him watching the stars on the balcony, wistful and forlorn.
"Are you ready?" she asked quietly.
He tried to hide his expression as he turned back to her and stepped inside the tower, but she reached out to touch his face and to brush away the tears she found glistening in the candlelight. "What is it? Tell me."
He shook his head, reaching up to move her hand away, and giving her a shadow of his lopsided smile. "Another time," he replied. "When I get back."
"You don't need to be so brave, Jaffaran. This is a dangerous thing you're doing. It's all right to be frightened. No one has done this in generations. Anything could go wrong. You'll be alone wherever I send you. We won't be able to contact you. You could be hurt, or need help, and we won't know."
Her voice crept up in pitch and her words crowded one after the other, her own worries getting the better of her under the pretense of calming my brother's nerves. She needn't have been concerned. "This isn't much of a pep talk," he drawled.
She shook her head, her voice shaking. "You don't understand. You could be lost – I could send you into nothing if I make a mistake."
He took hold of her arms, catching her darting eyes with his own steady gaze. "Do we have a choice?" he asked. When she shook her head, resigned to the task, he offered her that same lopsided smile. "Then don't make a mistake."
She stared at him incredulously for a moment, and then gathered him up into a hug, holding him as tightly as she could for as long as she could. "You are precious to me," she whispered. "You may be a den'Rhelys heir, and you may be Ajri's salvation, but you are my son, and you must always remember how precious you are to
me."
With that, she let him go, and turned to the notes she had written the book she'd brought with her. My brother set up the candles and platform that would be required, and then took his place at the center. Sparks of magic were already gathering around him as my mother finished her recitation of the ancient words of our ancestors.
Those sparks swirled and jumped as she pulled out her wand, streaking toward her with a chaotic shriek of raw power before bursting outward in a plume of light, striking my brother where he stood on the platform.
The magic curled him into a ball held high above the platform as a shower of colored light exploded around him. The lights whirled around and around, gaining speed as they flew. The windows rattled and the candles blew out. From our windows in the main house, we could see lightning in blues and pinks and greens arcing out of the tower.
The lightning gathered into a sphere of cracking energy. The platform dissolved into a ring of light, surrounding my brother as he arched his back, every muscle held stiff by the magical field. The light shot upward like golden flames, and all the air in the room rushed toward it like water pulled into a drain. There was a glimpse, just for a moment, of a strange mountainous landscape reflected in the glow.
My mother raised her hand in farewell, hoping that my brother would see that last gesture as the sphere began to close in on itself, sealing off the other world, and taking him with it.
The wind continued to rush in as the sphere contracted into a ball, then a bubble, then a single point of light. The noise stopped. The light blinked once, then winked out of existence with a soft ping. And in that instant, the room fell dark and Jaffaran was gone.
