The World Walkers: Athare: Bryn: Talking to Emrys

[k_a_webb]

After spending three hours talking with Riordan, and studying Emrys’ journals, Bryn had come to the conclusion that Janoch wasn’t going to cause too many problems. The other creators were still coming to terms with finding out that Emrys had been dreaming of Athare for decades, but Bryn had accepted it right from the beginning. It explained why Emrys had spent so much time alone and had become a permanent fixture in the family library. Eventually they’d got to the point where a bed had been put in there for him, even though no one could work out what he was doing. He’d spent days poring over the journals of old world creators, scribbling down notes, which amused people, because there was no chance of another Blue Queen any time soon, not after the mess that last one had made of everything. Bryn had always wondered if Emrys had known something they didn’t. He was mixed, Blue and Gold, with other families in his bloodline, so there was every possibility he might be Seeing their future.

Normally the Blue and Gold family were enemies. Everyone knew that. Unfortunately when you were young those sorts of things didn’t matter as much as they did when you got older, so Emrys’ parents had both ignored their parents when they were both told not to go anywhere near each other. They were in love. Love turned into something that neither of them were expecting – a pregnancy. Bryn had been six when Emrys was born to parents who weren’t permitted to handfast, because their families didn’t want that to happen, and Emrys had always known that his birth was something that had ended up tearing his parents apart. Luckily it was never something that was taken out on him, although it could have been if his father was a different man. The rest of the Blue family were nowhere near as kind.

Bryn’s father had told him, more than once, that Emrys wasn’t someone he should befriend. All Bryn’s father had cared about with him making friends with the right people, but he had no idea who the right people were. Emrys was the right person to befriend back then, even though no one knew that, and Bryn would have done, if he didn’t know that he was being watched. They all were. If he’d have gone against his father’s orders, especially in the Blue family library, someone would have said something and he would have regretted ever daring to do what he wanted to do. Although his father was gone that was still a weight around his neck. He hated it, so it was time to change things for the better… if Emrys would forgive him for letting his family’s choices have so much of an effect.

Everyone knew where Emrys was. He wasn’t permitted to leave his bed for another three weeks, because the healers were still worried about him, even though he kept saying he was over the worst of it. Giving in to the urge Bryn headed for Emrys’ bedroom, a room that had been transformed into his space by Riordan and Bronwen when they found out he was going to survive, so he could stay in the council buildings. They knew how much he wanted to be a part of the creation of the Web and by creating him a bedroom he could be. Normally it would be Bronwen who went to talk to him in the evenings, to let him know what was going on, while Riordan spent most of his time with the rest of the creators, getting some idea of what their plans were. Bryn was much more willing to talk to him that anyone else, because he accepted that working together was the most important thing, although that didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping a couple of secrets.

Feeling unsure of himself Bryn knocked on Emrys’ door. “Come in,” a recognisable voice called, after several seconds, sounding confused. When Bryn opened the door he was greeted by a huge smile. “Riordan said it would probably be you. Bronwen’s told me about some of your ideas, but it would be nice to have a chance to talk to you about them.”

That wasn’t what Bryn had expected to happen, so it was a nice surprise, and he found himself smiling back at Emrys. He didn’t have any idea how to reply though. In an attempt to give himself time to think he closed the door behind him, before looking around the room, finding himself amazed at the amount of work Riordan and Bronwen had done to give Emrys a room he could be comfortable in. Bryn couldn’t help feeling a little jealous, as his room was nowhere near as nice, but then he wasn’t trapped in it.

“As much as I hate to admit it that was my reaction too. Bronwen and Riordan put much more effort into this room than I expected them to.”

“How about I make us a cup of tea and then we can talk about my worlds?”

“I would love a cup. My healers always seem to know if I’ve got out of bed and as I really don’t want to be trapped in here any longer than I have to I’ve decided it’s simpler if I just stay in bed, no matter how much I want to get out of the bloody thing.”

“Unfortunately it’s their job to know, Emrys, especially when someone’s been in a coma.”

“Coma doesn’t correctly describe it, but it’s really the only way they can, because they don’t really understand what happened. I don’t really, even though Athare’s explained it to me more than once, but basically my body had got used to surviving off very little magic, although I was getting to the point where it probably would have killed me if we lost much more, so when we came here the overload of magic basically short circuited me. It took a little while, luckily, for me to get to that point, so I had a chance to talk to people before it happened.”

“Bronwen and Riordan.”

“From the beginning they were going to be the ones in control of the creation of the worlds and the races. They’ve done it all before, so they knew what they were doing – or at least that’s what the elders thought. Neither Riordan or Bronwen agreed, because they knew how much of a difference there was between creating a town in a box and a whole world. Yet no one was willing to listen to their experts when it became common knowledge that they were planning on creating a web rather than five worlds.”

“No one wants to believe that it will work.” Bryn looked through the selection of teas on the shelf. “They know that thirty-seven worlds means at least the same number of races and they don’t want that. It was hard enough to convince them that we had to create other races for Athare, because they couldn’t accept that it would actually help us to survive before we could work out how to create the worlds, especially as Riordan is terrified of using too much magic.”

“He does listen though, so he should be less terrified now. I told him that Athare isn’t worried about his experiments, because he was using less magic than he needed to be able to create anything more than a dwarf world, which means it isn’t going to have too much of an effect on the magic within her core. Having the other races here also helps, but they will be returning to the main continent soon. Athare doesn’t have enough magic, if we’re going to be using the majority of it for the creation of the worlds, to make the other two continents fertile and it would take too long anyway. Making this continent fertile took six years.”

“Didn’t she know that we’d be putting the other races on the other continents?”

“She hoped Bronwen, Eithne, and the Weavers would be able to convince the fae not to, but unfortunately they didn’t manage to. They have more times than they haven’t, so she was keeping her magic aside in the belief that this time she wouldn’t need to either, and finding that she picked wrong made her very unhappy, as it means the races are suffering. I told her it wasn’t her fault, she kept the magic aside for sensible reasons, and the races would push their dislike of the fae aside to come back soon enough.”

“Why did she keep the magic aside?”

“Up until the point that we started working on the races themselves there was a chance that this wouldn’t happen. Athare knew it if didn’t she wouldn’t survive, but she kept aside that magic to give us a chance of surviving. We always had a back-up plan ready, just in case, one that Riordan helped with, as he could talk to the families we would need help from.”

As Bryn finally picked out a tea he wanted to try he nodded. “We’d leave Athare behind.”

“Yes, we would. It wouldn’t be the group that is going to be working on the Web, but it would be the majority of us and some others, so that we could do the same sort of thing somewhere else. Of course we wouldn’t need thirty-seven worlds then, although that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t end up with that number or more. We’d have the freedom to do what we wanted, which wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing, because we wouldn’t have to deal with the fae, and we wouldn’t have the help of Athare, as we’d be too far away for her to be able to contact me.”

“If that was an option why did we stay?” Bryn turned to look at Emrys. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to leave all of this behind?”

“Yes, it would, but the thing you have to remember is that here we have Athare. She knows what works and what doesn’t. The other worlds we create will be sentient too. If we’re left Athare behind we’d have ended up in a non-sentient world and I don’t think we can do this without her – at least not if we want it to last.” Emrys sighed. “Honestly I would much rather we left the fae behind, but staying on Athare is much more important.”

Bryn nodded again. “That I do understand. Riordan showed me your journals, because I wanted to know if Janoch was going to cause any major issues, and according to everything I read it should be okay.” He shrugged. “I know that’s not definitive though. It depends on what races I place there.” He bit his lip. “We are going to have a problem, though.”

“The likelihood always was that Aubrie wouldn’t believe me and if that happened…” Emrys shook his head. “She’s going to put the Witches on Raenarin, because she believes that a matriarchal society is much less inclined to sexism than a patriarchal one, but she’s wrong. I hate the Witches and if she puts them there…”

“Gaelom.”

“Making a world like that was just an idea Piaras and I came up with when we were really bored. I don’t think it would actually work.” Emrys bit his lip. “Athare keeps telling me it’s an option, one she’s glad we thought of, but I don’t think the same way she does. It’s not going to be an easy job.”

“No, it’s not, but I don’t think it’s going to be as hard as you anticipate.” Bryn turned to the boiling kettle. “The worlds don’t need to be different. Each layer can be the same world, although you are going to need more races than you planned on, and that should makes things simpler for you, rather than you having to create a new world every time.”

“So what I do is magically copy the original world, somehow, and put that copy inside the original…” He sighed. “It might work, but it’s going to need more than me to do it.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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