Page 72 of Spelunking Through Hell

“No, I mean that sincerely. Yes, you found the papers that led you to the man, if a man who would kill you to save himself, and then try to convince you to repeat the act to salve his conscience can truly be worth finding. And yes, we followed the instructions and your trail here, to poor, once-sweet Cornale, which will grow sweet again, thanks to your actions.”

She pursed her lips, wiping the cool, damp thing across my forehead. “The broken vessel was shattered by the blow from within and has crumbled away. The door is gone. Not closed or sealed: removed. It no longer poisons the pneuma of Cornale.”

I smiled. Good for us.

“Had you been a little less eager, we would have told you not to go through the door to begin with,” she said. “When Aikanis fell through it, he was with a full detachment of cartographers and sorcerers, all of them set to support his explorations. All of them trapped by a world that they were never meant to find.”

She shook her head, lips pressed into a hard line. “Three of their sorcerers gave their lives to get the rest of them out. They drained themselves to nothing, and they did their best to break the bonds holding that lost world to this one. They failed, and so felt they had failed Cornale, and Ithaca, for the danger remained. They exiled themselves. You have brought home more than a dozen explorers, returning their legacies to their families, by telling us how their storiesended. The three sorcerers who died there will be remembered for their sacrifice. Their names will be sent into glorious retirement.”

“Why... mad?” If Aikanis had lost three men in getting out of the dead dimension, and we’d only lost me—and not for good—it didn’t make sense for her to be angry with Thomas.

“Because I know you’d doanythingfor that man, even die, and I can’t believe he let you do it,” she said, voice going sharp. “We would have found another way.”

“No... time,” I said. I was so very tired. My eyelids felt like they weighed ten pounds each, and I could feel them starting to drift closed. “Dying.”

“I know the world was dying,” she said gently. “The girl Sally, she told us everything, and we believe her, because unlike you and your Penelope, she has no cause to lie. It wouldn’t have fallen so easily upon your exit if it had been able to sustain itself any longer. You’ve done what you set out to do, and you can rest now. We’ll see about repairing the damage in the morning, when you’re stable, and then we’ll start for home.”

That sounded pleasant enough. I let my eyes close, sighing, and relaxed into the bedding beneath me. I couldn’t remember ever having been this tired in my life. Maybe a few times when I’d been injured back in Buckley, but that had been so long ago that I’d started to question my memory of how exhausted I’d been. This was impossible to question.

I didn’t sleep. I just drifted, lost on a tired bed of weariness and aches. I missed my tunnel and the topple through the dark. At least that had been painless and peaceful.

Helen left, coming back a while later with a bowl of rich, salty broth that she fed to me one spoonful at a time. I would have been embarrassed by my own weakness if it had been Sally, or even Thomas, but because in Ithaca, food is love, I knew she wasn’t judging me. She fed me, and I ate, and when she followed the soup with sips of some sort of sweet, sugary drink I didn’t recognize, I drank, and eventually she left, and I was alone again.

This time, I did sleep, at least long enough that when I woke again, it was to darkness and silence. I was still too weak to move, but someone was nestled in beside me, warm and solid. I turned my head as far as I could, which wasn’t far enough, and he stirred, making a soft mumbling noise. I smiled. Thomas. I closed my eyes again.

We both slept.

Twenty

“Someone hurts your family, you make them understand why no one hurts your family twice. You make the lesson very, very clear.”

—Alexander Healy

In an Ithacan tent, barely able to move, still in a presumably hostile dimension full of man-eaters, so, you know, having a great time

The next time Iwoke up, the tent was filled with morning light and Helen was sitting next to me with another bowl of broth. I tried to sit up and scowled when I still couldn’t move. Okay, this was getting ridiculous.

“What’s... wrong?” I managed to ask. Even that took too much effort.

“We think you had what the people in your dimension refer to as ‘a stroke’ shortly before your heart stopped,” said Helen bluntly. “The strain you put yourself through by allowing an untrained sorcerer to strip the pneuma from your body so quickly was too much. There are methods for removing it safely—surely Naga must have shown you some of those, given that you’ve been cleaned off regularly for as long as I’ve known you; that old snake has to be good for something—and you followed none of them. You’re lucky your Penelope was able to bring you back at all.”

I stared at her, eyes wide with horror. “Fix it,” I demanded.

“Damage to the brain is trickier than damage to other systems. I don’t know if we can. And that wasn’t the only consequence, although I expect it to be the one you care the most about.”

Well, she was right about that at least. I continued staring at her. Finally, I scowled. “Tattoos?”

“All your embedded spells are still with you, and if you want to repair your skeletal system at this point, that should be within your limits. You’ll need another night for soft tissue. But before you do, a moment.” Helen’s expression turned grave. “Phoebe is willing to repair what damage she can. She has two requirements for you, if she does.”

“What?”

“You won’t return to Empusa for any longer than it takes to collect whatever you may have left there. Your association with Naga is done. This is not up for negotiation.”

I nodded with difficulty. “O... kay. And?”

“You and your Penelope have an obligation to the people you removed from the dead world. You will see them settled in a place that will have them, and after that’s done, you will gohome, and stay there long enough to get some help laying your fears to rest. You are our friend. We love you dearly. We would rather you be healing yourself in peace and safety than running around risking your life on legs that we have granted you.”

I blinked, thinking this through. It sounded like they were happy enough to let me finish fulfilling my obligations, as long as I was willing to go back to Earth when I was done, and... get therapy? Maybe? My kids had been trying to convince me to do that for years. I smiled at her.

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