The Next Impossible Road

On the morning after Vajra agreed to prepare the crossing, Rishi stopped his staff above the folded blanket on the practice bench.

His left shoulder pulled. He had placed too much weight behind the stroke, and holding it now cost more than delivering it would have done.

He lowered the staff and began again.

Nearly a fortnight had passed since the Vault. The wound had closed, but the muscle still tired before the rest of him. If they crossed, he would have to travel with it as it was. He adjusted his rear foot, brought his hands closer, and let the next movement begin more slowly.

Manshoon had lain beneath his raised weapon. Rishi could remember how little distance remained, and the terrible ease of finishing it. The man had died anyway. Rishi had no wish to take back his own refusal. He wanted to know his body would still obey it when he was tired.

In the quiet room, the choice was simple to name. His shoulder shook with the work of holding it.

Rishi drew the staff back, turned, and stepped past the bench. He made room for a body to fall without following it with the end of the weapon. Then he returned to the place where the blow began.

The ape’s strength had made distance small. He remembered crossing the gold, the great weight of his arms, the dragon’s pinned wing. In this body he had to take another step to reach the same imagined opening. He took it, struck the blanket, and stopped before the recovering movement became a second blow.

The bench shifted against the wall.

Too much.

He reset it. Sweat ran beneath the red cord at his wrist. The room had begun to warm, though the stones remained cold under his feet.

On the next attempt, the staff touched the blanket without moving the bench. He tried to repeat it and caught the edge too hard.

Rishi sat with the weapon across his knees until his breathing settled. Then he stood and began from the turn.

Maeril returned to the study from the restoration room before midday with gray dust beneath her nails.

Rishi saw it when she set her notes beside the passage diagram. He moved the sheet aside.

She washed her hands in the study basin. The water clouded around her fingers. “The jaw is nearly right.”

He came to stand beside her. “Did they fit the piece you found?”

“It belongs farther back than we thought. They have it supported now.”

She rubbed at one nail after the dust had gone. Rishi waited until she leaned one shoulder against his arm, then rested his hand at her back.

“There is nothing useful I can do to it this afternoon,” Maeril said.

“Will they continue without you?”

“They continued while I was upstairs. They will continue while I am elsewhere. I have been told this with increasing patience.”

Rishi looked past her wavering reflection in the gray water to the covered wand on the desk. “I want to take that passage and look for Elisa and Chime.”

Maeril turned toward him.

“Firemind has people who can help him here,” he continued. “I do not know who they have.”

“Chime followed her through. I keep thinking they must still be together.”

She dried her hands slowly. “We will have to ask for both of them.”

Rishi nodded. “Both.”

“And if there is knowledge in Sigil that could help Firemind, I mean to find it.”

He thought of the pale gaps between the pieces on the table below. He had offered his hands where the restorers could use them. They had given him cloth to hold beneath fragments, water to bring, and messages to carry. None of it required him to stay while Elisa remained beyond their reach.

“We can look for that too. Vajra can send what they have learned with us.”

“Returning will be a separate problem.”

“I know. I still want to go.”

She studied his face. Her hand came to rest against his wrist. “Then we had better tell her we intend to try.”

Rishi drew a clean sheet toward him and wrote Kargun’s and Mara’s names at the top.

We will be away longer than we expected.

Maeril read over his shoulder. “They may notice when they reach the part about another plane of existence.”

He held the pen above the page. “I do not want the first line to frighten them.”

“Then tell them we are together. You can frighten them in the second.”

He crossed out the sentence and began again. He told them about Firemind’s petrification, the broken body, and the people working to restore him. He named Vajra and Renaer, so they would know whom to ask after he and Maeril had gone.

Elisa’s name took longer to put down.

She and Chime were alive when they went through the passage. We believe it led to a city called Sigil. We mean to follow them.

Below that, he wrote that he did not know when they could come home. Maeril read it without offering a correction.

He asked that they share the news with the Hall, then left a space beside his name and passed her the pen.

When she had signed, Rishi folded the letter for Renaer to send on. On a separate sheet he wrote the promised message for Grim. Before they went downstairs, he asked that it be taken to the sergeant at the western cordon.

Grim reached Blackstaff Tower late that afternoon. He carried a pack and the planar guide Maeril had given him. Its edges were already bent.

Rishi met him at the entrance and brought him to the chamber Vajra had chosen. The furniture had been moved against the walls. Maeril knelt over a diagram near the center, measuring its distance from the door. She used one hand against the floor when she rose.

Vajra waited beside the window with the Blackstaff. “We can prepare the chamber tonight and make the attempt in the morning. Before we do, you should hear what will continue here.”

She handed Rishi a copy of the restorers’ latest notes. “Renaer has secured the funds for their work. Firemind remains under my protection, with the same restrictions on access. The work does not end because you leave, and no one will attempt to restore his flesh simply to meet a date.”

Rishi read the last line of the report. A space remained where a recommendation should eventually go. “They will decide when there is enough to attempt it?”

“They will bring their findings to me. We will use the people best qualified to judge them.”

Maeril took the copy when he offered it and folded it into her notes. “If we find someone who understands a case like his, they will need this.”

Vajra inclined her head, then turned to Grim. “Has the passage been explained to you?”

“The message said they might be able to leave. The book has spent several evenings telling me why that could be a mistake.”

Maeril came to stand where he could see her face. “We can try to open a passage toward Sigil. We cannot choose where in the city it brings us, and we have not found Elisa or Chime. Opening it will use everything left in the wand. There will be no passage waiting here to bring us back.”

Grim looked at the empty center of the room. “And you want to step through it.”

“We have decided to,” Rishi said. “You can still leave by the door behind you.”

Grim shifted his pack higher. For a moment Rishi thought he would turn.

“My former associates know this city,” Grim said. “They know where I sleep, who might speak to me, which gates I could use. I have read enough to understand that Sigil will have its own difficulties.”

“Several volumes of them,” Maeril said.

“I would prefer some unfamiliar ones.”

He put the guide into his pack. “I am coming with you.”

Vajra studied him, then indicated the cleared space beside the door. “Leave your equipment there before we begin tomorrow. Nothing crosses a line until Maeril tells you it can.”

Grim moved to inspect the place. Rishi joined Maeril beside the diagram.

She showed him where she would kneel and where Vajra would hold the outer working with the Blackstaff. “I will need both hands to shape the opening. Until she has its boundary, I may not be able to take a pack.”

“I will put it on you. My staff can wait beside the door until then.”

“And keep the others clear of the chalk. An impressive leap would be deeply unwelcome.”

“I can walk.”

She looked at his shoulder. “You had better.”

They checked the width together. Rishi lifted her packed mirror to test where its edge would sit against her shoulder; she adjusted the wrapping so it would not catch when he settled the straps. Grim turned once in his armor with his pack on, then changed the angle of his sword.

Food, water, bandages, books. Rishi checked what he could lift with his left arm and moved the heavier bundle to his right. Maeril kept the restoration notes with the planar charts.

Vajra set the diagram on a table. Maeril took the chalk from her pouch and returned to the cleared floor.

That evening, Maeril found Rishi finishing his practice.

Four lamps lit the lower room. Moonlight entered through a slit high in the wall. His upper robe lay folded on the bench, red cords still at his wrists. Sweat marked his shoulders, and the new scar on the left stood out among older wounds.

She stopped in the doorway while he turned. The staff passed close to the bench and came to rest against his forearm. He lowered it, flexed the fingers of his left hand, and looked toward her.

She had come to report that the diamond dust was packed and the mirror now had enough padding to survive a moderate insult. For a moment, she forgot both.

“In Sigil, I may finally locate your ink-and-light dabus,” Maeril said.

Rishi picked up a cloth and wiped his neck. “The tattoo.”

“Your spine-map is becoming crowded. Vows, scars, poor decisions, dragons. Professional assistance seems prudent.”

“I still want it.”

Maeril entered the room. She had been making lists of necessities all afternoon. The plain desire in his answer stopped her beside the bench. “Good.”

Rishi set down the cloth. “And you?”

She considered. “Forests older than arrogance. A bed designed by someone who has slept before. Spells I can learn without first surviving them. Bacon.”

She reached him. “That will do. If I continue, we will reach dawn standing here, and I have intentions involving sleep.”

Rishi held out his hand. She let her fingers cross his palm, then stepped around him to look at his back.

Her touch settled beside the new wound in his shoulder. The skin had closed, though he drew a careful breath when she came near it. She eased her hand lower, tracing an older scar, then the line of his ribs. Heat rose beneath her fingers.

Rishi remained still.

“There you are,” she said.

He turned his head.

“My perfectly built man.” Her nails crossed his shoulder lightly.

His next breath changed.

Maeril smiled. “Come here. I would like to dream of something other than disintegration.”

Rishi placed one hand at her waist and the other near her shoulder. She stepped into his arms and rested her forehead against his chest.

The practice room smelled of lamp oil, clean cloth, and him. For a while she listened to his heartbeat and the small sounds of the tower beyond the door.

“Your leg?” he asked.

“Would prefer that you accompany me to a bed.”

He laughed softly against her hair.

She lifted her face. “We leave in the morning.”

“Then come and rest with me.”

Maeril took his folded robe from the bench. He extinguished the lamps, collected his staff, and returned to her.

Outside the narrow window, Waterdeep held through another night. They let the next impossible road wait until dawn.