Tallis drifted through a cold mist of pain and exhaustion, sinking deep beneath the waves of dreamless black and only occasionally breaching the surface into awareness. He pried one eye open and found himself staring up into a field of stars.

Am I dead? he thought.

He wrenched the other eye open and tried to sit up. All his muscles were knots of cramps and pain. They wouldn't hold him. Pain meant he was alive though, and he couldn't see any storm owls around so he took that as a good sign. He was still somewhere among the living. He shut his eyes again.

"Val," someone said. "I think he's awake."

A pleased grunt answered the voice and a pair of hands slipped in under his arm. There was something comforting about them. They were strong, steady, and warm and whoever they belonged to lifted Tallis into a sitting position. He cracked an eyelid again.

He was in a forest of light. The trees around him had thin trunks and long drooping branches. Their bark glowed with a soft violet light. Leaves hung down in long streamers that kissed the forest floor and each strand was studded with twinkling blue points of light, like the fruit of these trees were the stars themselves. Fat toadstools squatted between the trees and a soft teal glow spilled out from beneath their domed tops. The grass beneath him was the iron grey of the sea on a winter morning and it was soft and smooth. It felt more like fur than grass.

Maybe he was dead after all.

"Where am I?" he rasped. His throat felt like all of the sand in the gold dunes had been packed into it.

A Greater Fae knelt in front of him. She was built like the trees, tall and willowy with pastel blue skin, and a rack of delicate but sharp antlers. "Welcome to the Highlands," she said. Her voice was like a January breeze and it sent a shiver down Tallis' spine.

He shot Valerie a worried look. "Why are we here? What's going on?"

"We're here," she said, handing him a glass bottle. "Because Cold Iron knocked the stuffing out of us."

The Greater Fae in front of him looked him and down and then nodded. She turned to address Valerie. "This one will be fine. Feed him, water him and he'll recover."

Valerie folded her arms across her chest and let out a huff. "I think he can feed and water himself."

Tallis sniffed carefully at the bottle he'd been handed. It smelled like water. He took a quick sip and let out a contented sigh. It was the coldest most delicious water he'd ever tasted in his life. He guzzled down the rest of the bottle.

He threw the bottle away. "How's everyone else?"

"It's touch and go." Valerie shrugged. "Callan is even tougher than he looks. He'll bounce back, but it's only once in a blue moon that a Fae regrows an ear." She pointed to a strip of cloth stuck to her left cheek with some kind of green paste. "I'll have a new scar but that ain't nothing to worry about. Aragam," she paused and took a breath collecting herself. "I just don't know. They staked him with Rowan wood."

Tallis' brow furrowed and he shook his head, not understanding.

"It's bad stuff for Fae creatures," Valerie continued. "There's a reason we use it to keep them away."

"Can I see them?" He pulled himself to his feet with a groan. A dull ache that had nothing to do with his physical pains sat in the center of his chest. People had gotten hurt because of him. They might die, and it was his fault.

Valerie didn't answer. She simply turned on her heel and started walking away. Tallis did his best to keep up and she led him to one of the tall trees. Pushing the curtain of leaves aside, she waved him inside.

There was a one room cottage beneath the branches. A table and chairs sat in the center of the room, growing up from the roots that carpeted the floor. Two beds were on either side of the room, holding Aragam and Callan.

Callan was sitting up. He was bare chested save for the bandages wrapped around his ribs. The side of his face slathered in green goo and there were dark circles under his eyes. His right ear was gone and a chunk of his right horn had been blown away. He sat scraping at the stump with a file.

"Callan," said Tallis. His voice broke and his breath caught in his throat.

The warrior smiled. "Tallis, you're awake. I was worried about you."

"You were worried about me?"

"Of course I was.” He laid down the file. “You came in with a fever that would not break. No matter what they tried you could not seem to cool down. Eventually we decided to put you outdoors. I’m happy the cool air did you some good.”

Tallis was taken aback. Here was a man who had been shot and maimed and he was worried because a stranger who had a fever. What had he done to deserve someone like that in his life? The cold feeling in his chest spread outwards, sending creeping fingers of self doubt inching through him. “You don’t need to worry about me. Really, you don’t. I mean, I’m just a nobody right? Just another client.”

Callan set his jaw and his hand clenched around the file. He looked furious for just a moment but then he let out a slow breath and his expression softened. “You are much more than a nobody, and even if you were just a client, I would happily go through all that pain again for you. No one deserves to have their family torn apart like that. No one. If the price for helping is a few pints of blood and some horn, then I will pay that price again and again.”

He certainly didn’t feel worth it right now. “But we failed. People got hurt, and my parents still aren’t together. And there’s no way all that trouble was worth a few gems and some spellbooks.”

“Failure is subjective. Sure, we got hurt, sure it’s not the outcome we wanted but I think we won. We got your parents out of their cage, we gave them a chance, we left them with hope. Most importantly we showed people that Cold Iron can be fought, and the more we do that the more the world will change for the better. We trade in crystal and spells but the real currency of the guild is hope and inspiration.” He paused and his brow wrinkled. He tried to speak a few times but couldn’t seem to find the words. “Do you know what a Justicar is? Do humans have them, or that is only a Greater Fae tradition?”

Tallis’ legs started to wobble again and a dull burning feeling spread through his thighs. He hobbled to the table and chairs and the center of the room and sat. “No,” he said. “We don’t have Justicars, at least not where I’m from.”

“Okay. The Fae are powerful, especially here in our own lands, there’s no questioning that, but we don’t come in great masses and hordes like your people do. We don’t have armies, and if we did the wars between them would not leave enough of us left alive to form even one clan. We would die within one, maybe two, generations. Instead of armies we have Justicars, we have people like me. People who hold no allegiance to any family or clan, people who settle disputes, who fight battles for those who cannot or won’t fight for themselves. We’re important here, but when I came to your world I saw that we are needed there much more. So, to answer your question, no. All of the trouble was not worth it. Seeing three innocent men run free was. Suffering the blows that would kill innocent people was. Seeing the look in your eyes as we rode away was. That’s why I fight.”

“That’s, um,” Tallis started, not quite sure of what to say. “That’s noble of you.”

“There is nothing noble about it. It is what I was born for. I know you despise fate, but it’s what I was meant to be. This is my true path.” He threw the blankets off of the bed and stood with a groan. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to take you to a reflecting pool not far from here, and I want to show you your path.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t think I have a fate or a destiny. I’m not one of you. What’s this pool going to do for me?”

Callan put a hand on his shoulder and steered him out through the curtain of leaves. “The pool does not care who you are, or where you’re from. No matter what, it shows you a glimpse into who you will be. Please, if you don’t want to do it for yourself then do it as a favour to me. If you feel like my injuries are your fault, then that debt will be cleared if you do this for me.”

“Fine.” Tallis sighed. “I’ll look if it’ll wipe the slate clean.”

“Good.” Callan gave him a playful shove towards the treeline. They stepped under a thicker stand of trees with stiff branches that intertwined into a canopy of soft blue leaves and starlight. There was no underbrush here except for the occasional giant mushroom so the path forward was easy. The forest didn’t fight them for every inch of ground like the woods back home.

Tiny streams flowed down from hills that rolled in the distance, cutting swaths of reflected silver light through the soft grass. Callan stopped by a larger pool. A thin stream entered it and an even narrower trickle of water drained from it, leaving a wide pool that rippled with a slow moving current. “Here,” said Callan. He whispered a lyrical phrase and waved his hands in a dancelike gesture. Two chairs writhed out of the ground, grown from the roots running beneath their feet.

Tallis sat and savoured the fresh, green and earthy scent of the new growth. This must be a dream. He was growing more sure of it by the second and tried to force his eyes open further, tried to wake himself up and return to the stone floor where he was certain his body was still lying.

“You can stop doing that,” said Callan. “You’re not going to wake up. You’re not going to go anywhere but right here.”

“I’m not dead, am I?” It was a foolish question but he needed to be sure.

“No.” Callan laughed. There was always something warm and rich in his laughter, something that seemed so genuine, so reassuring that he was always laughing with you and never at you. “No, you are far from dead. If anything, I would say you are more alive than you have ever been before. Now, just rest a moment, watch the water and reflect, and it will tell us something of your future.”

Tallis rolled his eyes. What could a puddle tell him? If anything, he was sure it would show him back at his desk somewhere, definitely not at Cold Iron, he’d made sure that bridge was burned to the ground, literally. But he was no hero. He was no smuggler. He didn’t have Aragam’s magic, Callan’s strength, Setia’s fury, or Valerie’s resilience. He was normal, plain, not special in any of the requisite ways. The puddle seemed to respond to that, and dark shapes swirled under the surface like the long shadows cast by dead trees moving with the wind. He stared into the mass of dark and jagged edges, and a slow tingle of horror and revulsion crept up the back of his neck. He didn’t belong here. Then the image shifted. A golden spark cut the gloom and spread outwards to the edges of the pool. Tallis looked down at an image of himself, eyes wide and terrified hands trembling, swallowing hard and saying, “If you need to get into the evidence room, you’ll need to take me.” The light faded and the image greyed folding in on itself until it resolved into another image of a small grey bird sitting on one of the jagged branches. The bird gave him a hard look and spread its wings, flying off into the darkness. The water calmed and the pool became an ordinary puddle again.

Tallis leaned forward in his seat, scowling down at the water, wishing it had a little more context for him, but it was done. Apparently he had seen what he was meant to see. He bent and scooped up a stone, throwing into the pond with a huff.

“What the hell was that?” he said. 

"The future is always in motion, shifting, half hidden in the mist. The streams of fate, sadly, hold no hard and fast answers, only hints and metaphors. What do you think it meant?"

"I think it meant a bunch of nonsense wrapped up in a picture of me. I don't know if it meant anything."

Callan sighed. "You are going to be as stubborn as a horned serpent over this aren't you?"

"I don't know what that is," said Tallis, folding his arms across his chest. "But yes, all this fate stuff is trash."

"You know," said Callan, smiling. "For someone who thinks they are a nobody, you don't seem to have any trouble standing up to a Faeland warrior. Not many people would do that."

"I suppose you could blame Cold Iron for that. They always said one agent was worth ten Fae warriors." He gave Callan a long look. He seemed mostly fine despite his injuries. "I'm starting to think that was a lie."

Callan stood and stretched to his full, towering height. "Starting to, huh? Well maybe the next time we work together I can really convince you."

"Next time?" Tallis pushed himself to his feet and walked with Callan back to the tree cottage. "What makes you think there's going to be a next time?"

“I feel it.” Callan held open and the curtain and motioned Tallis inside. “Remember I was there in that police station too, I saw you. When it comes down to it, you’re as much of a fighter as anyone of us. I think you’d make a great Faerunner if you set your mind to it.”

Tallis shuddered thinking back to the last time someone said they saw potential in him, thinking back to that trip outside the walls with Allistair, thinking back to the devil in the forest. “I think I’m fine being normal.”

Callan snapped his fingers and breathed a spell under his breath. The table in the center of the room grew and three more chairs burst from the earth, damp and dripping fresh soil. “And what’s so great about a normal life,” he asked.

Tallis eased himself into one of the fresh chairs. “I don’t know. It’s just normal. It’s nice. My chairs don’t grow up out of nothing.”

“That’s a thin reason. You’d trade greatness and adventure for a few pieces of furniture.”

“It’s not that.” He shook his head. “It’s all of this. I mean look where we are, look at what’s around us. This place … this place is crazier than hell. I’m still waiting to wake up from whatever fever dream this is.”

Callan snapped his fingers and spun a pipe out of a knot in the table top. He plucked a leaf from the wall, stuffed it into the bowl of the pipe, lit it with a whispered note, and blew a smoke ring towards Tallis.

He just sat there, still trying to process what he had just witnessed. “That kind of makes my point. Where I’m from, people can’t pull a pipe out of thin air and smoke it. And I think I like it better that way. I think I like things to make sense. I think I like my plain and normal life with my farm and my parents and my dull clerk job.”

Callan took a long drag on the pipe, trying but failing to keep a grin from his face. “Is that so?”

“Of course it is,” said Tallis, suddenly uncertain. Unbidden, a childhood memory flashed into his mind. A memory of his sitting on his father’s knee while he read stories from the gilded book of tales he kept. Norman had told him that they were descended from dragon slayers. Tallis had told him he wanted to grow up to be a knight. That seemed like so long ago. It seemed like the world was different then, like there really was magic around every corner and everything was so much lighter and brighter. With a long sigh he looked up to the bottled starlight twinkling through the canopy. Maybe his childhood self knew something his adult self didn’t. When had he let the world kill his sense of wonder?

Callan pointed at him with the end of the pipe. “I don’t believe you. I also refuse to believe you had a normal life before this. Death’s messengers guarded your home. Elementals live in your barn. Your parents tangle with giants. There is something far beyond normal in you.”

Tallis traced the wood grain of the table with a finger. “Anything in the barn was Ed’s doing. I never had any luck with the horses.”

“That’s because you were treating them like horses, and the spirits of the forest demand a different kind of care and respect.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” Callan took a silver pocket watch out of a pants pocket and flicked the cover open. “We have some time before supper. Let me show you what I mean.”

They left the cottage again and walked to a field behind the row of willow trees. Something like a horse grazed on the grass there. Like a horse but not quite. It’s limbs were made from driftwood, bleached by sun and tide, worn smooth by sand. It’s flanks were clad in moss, damp and rich like the forest floor after a spring rain. It’s main and tail were made from a mix of oak and maple leaves, green close to the base but fading to yellows and reds towards the tips. The forest horse caught sight of him, threw its head and trotted over to him, nuzzling its snout into him.

Callan patted the horses mossy side. "Phaethon might not be your biggest supporter, but he was worried about you either way."

Tallis stroked the wood-horse's mane. "This isn't Phaethon. Phaethon was a horse-horse. Not whatever this is." The creature was amazing he had to admit. It was beautiful in a haunting, ethereal sort of way.

"Phaethon," said Callan. "Had a very powerful glamour cast over him. I think, when we see your father again, I will have many questions for him. The Fae don't just part with a forest elemental on a whim. Someone or something must have owed him a hell of a favour for him to walk away with a creature like this."

The horse snorted. Its breath fogged the air and carried the smell of fresh grass and damp earth.

"Yes, I know," said Callan. He kept petting Phaethon's side. "You are a very special creature."

"Can you, um, understand him?" Tallis asked. He felt more than a little foolish asking but he didn't know what the rules were here. Everything had gone crazy.

Callan gave him a sidelong glance. "Do the horses normally speak where you are from?”

Tallis felt the heat creeping up his cheeks. “No.” he looked down to his feet and kicked at a tuft of grass.

“He’s a smart horse,” Callan continued. “But still a horse at heart. The real difference is an elemental needs a little more politeness than the average animal. You can’t just throw the saddle on them and point them where you want to go. You have to at least ask nicely first.”

“That,” said Tallis looking into the horse’s glowing eyes. “That actually explains a lot."

"Well, I am glad I could provide a little insight. I just wish I had some more answers." He looked back towards the cottage trees. "We should head back and get something to eat. We have a few days here to rest and then we're off to the big city. We should be able to buy passage into San Tempes for you there. Get you reunited with your parents."

Tallis raised an eyebrow and looked out at the unbroken wilderness around him. "I'm surprised you have cities here."

"We have real cities here, nothing like those artificial trash heaps of wood and stone you live in. You'll love it."

He wasn't sure he would love these 'cities' but a few days worth of food and rest sounded good, and a reunion and a return to normalcy sounded better.