The Law of Nines

Alex listened to the rain as he thought about her words.

“Then that bell rang,” she said. “I saw Bethany’s reflection in a window.

“In that instant I saw all that was about to be lost.

“We’re still struggling to learn to come here. It’s very difficult and takes us quite some time to craft a lifeline. Passing into the great void is daunting beyond imagining.”

Alex couldn’t picture such a thing. “In what way?”

Jax stared off into the memories for a moment. Flashes of lightning cast her face in an otherworldly bluish light.

“It’s like leaping off a cliff into eternal night . . . falling without end. Every second you expect to hit the bottom. Your muscles and nerves ache in expectation of a sudden, bone-shattering impact. An eternity of fear is compressed into every one of those moments that you exist in a place without anything but that fear.

“At first you may feel like you have leaped into endless night, but a point comes when you realize that there is no up, no down, no hot, no cold, no light, no sensation of any kind, not even breathing, not even your own heart beating. You are without anything that makes you feel alive.

“In that moment comes panic.”

When lightning hit nearby, giving off a loud crack of thunder that shook the Jeep, Alex jumped. Jax didn’t. It was as if she was in another place beyond the reach of the real world.

“How long does it take?” Alex finally asked after she had been silent for a time. “How long must you endure such a thing?”

Her haunted eyes stared unblinking into memories. “You feel as if you have somehow plummeted into eternity. You feel alone beyond anything I could explain.

“There comes a time when you begin to believe that you’ve died. You can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything. You feel as if you must be dead.”

Jax seemed to force herself to abandon the memory, as if staying there any longer might cause the place to snatch her back. She took a purging breath and looked over at him.

“When I start for this world I have a reference point found with the aid of magic, so from here there is no way for me to find a reference point in my world, no way to know where to return to. That’s why I need a lifeline to pull me back through that eternal void to my world. Without a lifeline there is no way to return.

“When I went back the last time I took the painting you gave me, but I lost it in the void. I loved that painting and wanted more than anything to take it back with me for others to see. I held it as tightly as I could, but I lost it. I don’t remember where or how it was gone, it just was. That experience proved what we had thought—things can’t be brought back from this world to ours.

“I’m sorry, Alex, that I lost your beautiful gift.”

He offered her a smile of comfort. “I’ll paint you another.”

She nodded her thanks for his understanding.

“When I saw Bethany and her thugs at your door I knew that I didn’t have a moment to lose. I had to come immediately, even though I had no lifeline ready.

“I had to come because you are the right man, Alex.”

Alex listened to the rain drumming steadily against the roof of the Jeep and the distant rumble of thunder. He remembered the day in his studio that she had described. He had forgotten all about the mirror by then; he thought that he would never see her again. That hadn’t been the only day he had raged against death for taking Ben. If she had been watching him, she would know that, too.

Ben wouldn’t be dead were it not for these people coming to his world, coming for his family, coming for him.

If he didn’t stop them, who would? How many more would die?

Jax laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right, Alex?”

He nodded. He wondered how she could be all right, knowing that she had no way to get home.

“We need to stop them,” he said with quiet resolve. “I don’t know if I’m the right man, but I’m the only Rahl you’ve got. If I can do anything to help, I will. If we can figure this out and stop them, then maybe other people won’t needlessly lose their loved ones.”

“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered. She again gently rested her hand on his arm, as if to say she understood all that his words conveyed, and was sorry to have to ask so much of him.

He knew that, for her, there was no turning back. There wasn’t any turning back for him, either. No matter what happened, they were now committed.

Her face brightened with a small smile. “So, any ideas?”

“Well,” he said, “Bethany knew something about what these other people were after. She wanted to bear my successor. That could only gain one thing: the inheritance that came to be mine when I turned twenty-seven. I think we need to find out about this land that I’m inheriting.”

“I suppose that it makes sense for us to look into it. But I can’t see how it would have anything to do with what they’re after. What do they need with land?”

“I don’t know, but Bethany sure seemed intent on having it.”

“Not necessarily. It makes more sense to me that what she was really after was your child, a Rahl child.”

“What good would a Rahl child do her?”